Challenges of Trading in Ruminants and Emerging Solutions — AQAI

For small farmers in India, the huge livestock population is not only food for sustenance but an important avenue of income. This revenue acts as a backup option when there are losses in farming due to dwindling water resources and lack of fertile land.

But, unfortunately sales of livestock have remained unorganized. The use of technology has been confined to organized trade for end-products of livestock like meat. The small farmers selling livestock in villages, towns are at the mercy of buyers and have to sell their goats, sheep at very low prices. They earn much less income selling livestock when compared to others selling the end products like meat.

Some of the other problems faced by farmers in rearing and selling of small livestock are irregular supply of feed, no clear procedure for fixing prices, poor sales support, animal sickness, lack of information and rising expenses to sell. Information on livestock rearing, feed, pricing is available to a very small percentage of farmers as compared to agricultural crops.

Enterprises like AQAI and PashuBajaar, help small farmers get better selling prices for their goats from buyers in the market through an open and clear system. AQAI plans to evolve a strong market system where marginal and landless farmers can get better prices for their sheep and goats.

AQAI also aims to become a marketplace for good quality goat meat and ensure a fair selling price for goat sellers.

With an online platform for livestock selling, AQAI covers all aspects like training, feed inputs, marketing and has potential to be a single contact point for firms and farmers selling livestock. AQAI has a goal of helping 1 million livestock farmers get guaranteed and fair selling prices for their animals in the market. Plans are there also to extend these services to cover cattle like cows, buffaloes and to help women farmers in rural areas through the latest technologies.

Technology and AQAI have combined to make 10,000 goat farmers in the poorest areas of the country financially independent and improve their incomes with better selling prices.

Originally published at https://www.aqai.in.