Improving Village Poultry Performance through Community-Based Management: Evidence from Benin, West Africa

The community-based management is an approach developed in Benin, over last two decades, in order to facilitate the dissemination of village poultry improvement technologies, e.g. poultry vaccination, henhouse construction, additional feeds for birds, etc. It involves the installment of "poultry interest group" as well as the training of village poultry vaccinators. Based on a stochastic frontier trans log production function, this study shows that community-based management has a positive effect on breeders‟ efficiency, not only for participants, but also for non-participants of experimental villages. For the participants in community-based management, women have a marginal product which is almost equivalent to that of men, and in some cases (e.g. vet and labor) the productivity is actually higher for women than for men. Educated farmers and those living far from markets seem to be more efficient in village poultry production than non-educated farmers and those living near markets.