The Punjab government has approved Rs90.574 million project 'an initiative towards food security and innovative livestock business in Pakistan' aimed at developing and promoting Ostrich farming in the province. According the revised PC-I of the project, Ostrich farming is an emerging and innovative business being 10 times rapid provider of white meat compared to poultry and 15 times faster than traditional cattle farming. At the moment, ostrich farming is a huge industry in USA, Australia, Europe and some countries in Middle East like Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. More than 30,000 ostrich farms of different sizes are fully functional globally. Due to high nutritional value of its meat as compared to other white and red meat and high food conversion ratio (FCR) as compared to other animals and birds, it addresses faster and cheaper food security.
In Punjab, the Livestock & Dairy Development Department (L&DDD) in collaboration with the University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) is the implementing partner for this project which is aimed at addressing the food security through sharing the load on meat and beef in the country and generates exportable, high-valued surplus meat.
The project will ensure provision of subsidy to livestock farmers for ostrich rearing /farming, capacity building of livestock/ostrich farmers, establishment of a Model Ostrich Farm at UVAS, Pattoki, experimentation on Ostrich Breeding and Rearing in Model Ostrich Farm at UVAS as well as in private ostrich farms and exploring export avenues for ostrich meat and other ostrich products.
The basic theme of the project is to engage, educate, motivate and support local farmers for ostrich farming; an innovative livestock business, through technical assistance and subsidy in rearing of ostrich chicks. For the purpose, livestock/ostrich farmers from throughout Punjab will be selected and supported in this business. The selected farmers will purchase ostrich chicks from any source as per their convenience and rear them at their facility. Ostrich chicks at registered ostrich farms will be tagged. In the Revised PC-I, a total of approximately 9,146 birds have been registered for which subsidy have to be disbursed at the rate of Rs 10,000 per bird but the subsidies to the most of new farmers could not be made possible due to unavailability of sufficient funds under the project, as per given criteria, most of the installments of the new farmers will be due or entitled to be disbursed in the Financial Year 2018-19.
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