Cargill highlight Hatching Hope poultry aid initiative

It teamed up with livestock aid charity Heifer International earlier this year to launch the Hatching Hope Global Initiative, using poultry production to open new opportunities for women farmers to strengthen their communities.

Starting work in India, Mexico and Kenya, Hatching Hope is offering training based on Cargill’s animal nutrition expertise to help farmers expand and improve their poultry production in a sustainable way. Programming will ensure farmers are connected to the products, services and markets they need to grow their businesses.

All of this, according to its annual report, will move farmers toward living incomes and improve productivity, nutrition and resilience, while also increasing the amount of protein available to their families and communities. Additionally, the programme will raise awareness of the value of protein in the diet through Heifer’s well-established community development model.

India

Odishaan, an eastern state on the Bay of Bengal, is one of the poorest states in India and Hatching Hope aims to improve nutrition and incomes for 300,000 smallholder farmer households of 1.65m people.

Kenya

Hatching Hope in Kenya will build on existing relationships in the financial sector and in farmer cooperatives, improving productivity, incomes and market connections for poultry farmers. It will also introduce poultry to other farming cooperatives as a way to diversify their incomes.

Mexico

Malnutrition affects between 7-15% of the population but in some parts more than 35% of children are still struggling from chronic malnutrition. The added nourishment of poultry and eggs can go far to prevent hunger across the country and Hatching Hope will look to work with small-scale poultry farmers to increase their production and living incomes.