Introduction
Turkey declared Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreaks first on 07th October 2005 and then on 25th of December of the same year. The first outbreak was quickly eradicated. However, the impact of the latter, which resulted in human deaths, caused panic among consumers the impact of which lingered until Mid-February 2006. Due to this situation, the chicken meat market collapsed, and sales dropped up to 4% below pre-AI level, with prices dropping to a level much lower than the cost of production reported in January 2006.
Scientific estimates of the socio-economic impact of the AI outbreaks on the village producers are pre-requisite for a successful rehabilitation programme. However, this was overlooked by the Turkish government.
This paper reports economic and social impacts of the 2005-2006 HPAI outbreaks on the village chicken producers in Turkey.
Survey research related to HPAI in Turkey
The data needed for the research were obtained from surveys conducted between September 2006 and March 2007 in the form of face-to-face interviews with village chicken producers (a total of 64 families) in the 6 provinces where the AI epidemic broke out (Ağrı, Ankara, Balıkesir, Erzurum, Iğdır, and Van).
The content of the survey included questions designed to determine the amount of chicken assets of the families, their consumption of chicken products, the share of chicken sales in their incomes, as well as the economic (income effect and so on) and social (nutrition, psychology, etc.) impacts of AI. Furthermore, another concern was to ascertain the producers’ level of knowledge about AI and their views on the efforts of the government to fight the disease.
Socio-economic impacts of HPAI outbreaks on the village chicken producers
Prior to the crisis, the total chicken assets of the 64 participant families had been 2836 birds, 1947 (69%) of which consisted of laying hens. Drawing upon these figures, it was ascertained that the average chicken number per family amounted to 44.4 birds. Despite the fact that 70% of the families declared that they had covered chicken coops, they stated that they conducted chicken rearing usually outdoors by free-range farming method and that the chickens were usually fed on harvest by-products and meal leftovers. As for the main reason for engaging in chicken farming, 70% of the participants mentioned meeting their nutritional needs and 20% additional income, while 9% stated that they relied on chicken farming as their primary income source. Only one producer stated that he ran this business simply as a hobby.
It was discovered that, prior to the AI crisis, the number of slaughtered chickens and farmed eggs per family per month had been 4.6 birds and 139 eggs; and the amount of sold chickens and eggs 5.1 birds and 84 eggs, respectively. This information confirmed the fact that the main motive behind chicken farming was nutrition and families derived secondary income from this activity. Among the participant families, 63% stated that they did not sell live chickens and chicken products (egg and meat), and were engaged in chicken farming only to meet their nutritional needs. The share in the total income of the revenues derived from chicken farming was observed to be 11% for all families and 33% for the families who sell chicken and products. Yet, there were also cases (three families) where almost all (90%) the familial income came from the sales revenue of chicken and products.
It was further stated that, in the surveyed families dealing with chicken farming prior to the AI crisis, a considerable portion (63%) of the sales were conducted by the housewives and they themselves usually spent the revenue derived as pocket money. Thirty-six families (56%) stated that they never consumed chicken products during the course of the crisis, for which they simply gave the reason as the risk of AI. However, 53% of the surveyed families resumed consumption within the first three months, and 97% within the first nine months.
It was reported that the principal factors that led the farmer families, who had never consumed chicken products during the crisis, to resume their former consumption patterns was their neighbours’ returning to consuming chicken products (47%) and various television programs, chiefly that of Uğur Dündar (31%), who is believed to be a popular and trusted investigative journalist in Turkey. Chicken revenues, which had made an average contribution of 33% to the budget of families selling chicken during the pre-crisis period, totally ceased to exist in the course and aftermath of the crisis. Moreover, after the crisis, the producers began to purchase chicken meat and egg which had previously been something they almost never paid for.
The participants reported that, before the crisis, they had not bought any chicken meat and eggs from supermarkets; however, since chickens which had stopped laying were not marketed anymore – as this was prohibited by the Ministry – following the crisis, they ended up totally dependent on supermarkets. Whereas the number of families who had never bought eggs and chicken meat from supermarkets before the crisis was 56 (88%) and 42 (66%) respectively, only four families (6%) stated that they never bought eggs and chicken meat from supermarkets following the crisis. On the other hand, while the monthly amount of chicken bought from non-domestic suppliers (supermarkets and neighbours) was on average 1.9 kg of chicken meat and 6.8 eggs respectively, these figures rose up to 9.3 kg and 90 eggs in the aftermath of the crisis. In terms of red meat and fish consumption within families, no significant change was observed.
Apart from its adverse economic effects on farmer families, the crisis had serious social and psychological impacts as well. Since they faced the risk of AI on one hand, and since they ended up dependent on non-domestic producers in terms of source of chicken protein and they considered market-bought chicken meat and eggs as unappealing to their taste on the other hand; they cut down on their consumption of chicken products to a considerable extent. On the other hand, housewives living in the countryside stated that their husbands usually did not provide them with housekeeping money; therefore they kept the revenue derived from the sales of chicken products and used it to meet the needs of themselves and their children, which means that chicken revenue constituted a very crucial factor for their economic independence in this regard. The disappearance of the income under question following the AI pandemic is evaluated as a crucial socio-economic phenomenon.
In the survey, heads of the households were asked whether they believed in the existence of Avian Influenza pandemic in Turkey: In total, 65% of them responded that they did not believe there existed Avian Influenza pandemic in Turkey, arguing that this was simply a conspiracy. Families dealing with chicken farming in villages were asked what the main factor was behind the turning of AI disease into a state of crisis: 48% of the families responded that the main actor responsible for the crisis was the media, which communicated the news in an extremely exaggerated manner, causing people to panic. Additionally, 26% of the families put the blame on the integrated broiler production plants and believed that these firms themselves deliberately evoked the crisis so that the farmers would buy the chickens and eggs produced by these firms. They further stated that they themselves had played no negative role in the crisis.
The families were further asked about their level of knowledge about AI before the pandemic: 36% declared that they were sufficiently informed on the issue, 17% expressed that they had very little information, and 47% stated that they had no information at all. These statistics considerably varied from one province to another. Eighty-six percent of the surveyed families stated that they acquired the information regarding the Avian Influenza through television reports. The surveyed families were further asked of their other opinions on the activities of the government regarding the destruction of animals. The opinions of the chicken-raising families on the efforts of the government to inform them on the disease varied greatly. Whereas 44% of the respondents evaluated these efforts as ‘below mediocre’, 40% responded to this question as ‘above mediocre’. Families considered the activities of the Ministry to fight the disease in the infected zones as successful in general (58%); yet, a considerable portion (38%) still evaluated these as unsuccessful. An average of 86% of the chicken raisers enjoyed subsidies (varying between 43% and 100% for the provinces). Nevertheless, approximately 54% of the families reported that they did not consider the government's compensatory subsidies paid per animal as sufficient; that the subsidies paid covered only the value of the animals; but the indirect losses suffered by the producers, who were unable to raise chicken in the meantime, were mostly neglected. The efforts of the government to make timely payments and organize the payment procedures were in general deemed as successful.
In the province of Samsun, the Department of Animal Health – a branch of the Provincial Directorate of Agriculture – launched a project to alleviate the risk of AI, and it was reported that battery farming reduced AI risks along with those of other diseases as well as mortality rate (Geerlings, Reference GEERLINGS2006). Yet a considerable part of the surveyed families (62%) declared that they would not adopt such a farming system and they believed that covered chicken coops would reduce productivity as well as require extra costs, which go against the nature of the animals. Ninety-two percent of the surveyed families were reluctant about the idea of joint chicken farming.
Conclusions
Backyard chicken production is widespread in Turkey. However, the main purpose of the production is home-consumption in the rural families. Even before the ban of live chicken sales after the HPAI outbreaks in Turkey, backyard birds rarely reached the terminal markets. It was the first time the method of disease eradication which prescribes stamping out all animals, including the healthy ones in an outbreak zones was applied in Turkey during the AI epidemic.
Although the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) prescribes for the destruction of animals in a 3-kilometer radius area around the infected zone, the Ministry of Agriculture chose to destroy the poultry in all the districts and villages of the infected zone, and even those throughout some provinces in the eastern region, considering that backyard poultry were the most important risk factor of the HPAI outbreaks, and cost of the compensation were affordable by the government. Thus, the government promptly destroyed 2.5 million free-range village chickens in the affected provinces as a way of fighting the disease and paid compensations to the farmer families. Besides, it prohibited free-range poultry farming as a supporting policy for fighting the disease and also banned the sale of live spent hens.
The authors of this paper think that the government's decision on wiping out the backyard poultry in the infected regions in Turkey was significantly influenced by the misleading results of the FAO projects related to the socio-economic impacts of HPAI on village poultry producer in various Far East Asian countries, chiefly Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Delquigny et al., Reference DELQUIGNY, EDAN, NGUYEN, PHAM and GAUTIER2004; FAO, Reference FAO2004; Veterinaires Sans Frontières, 2004). The assessments in nearly all FAO supported studies dealing with ‘the socio-economic impacts of AI on village chicken rearing’ remained confined to ‘financial effect analysis’; and these studies focused on changes in production, profitability, and prices – due to the pandemic – with regard to the production activities of farmer families, and did not consider broader economic and social impacts of stamping out poultry in the rural areas.
Soon after the epidemic, it was observed that these policies brought about much more critical socio-economic problems and eventually, the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs decided to confine destruction to infected zones. Otte et al. (Reference OTTE, HINRICHS, RUSHTON, ROLAND-HOLST and ZILBERMAN2008) reviewed the studies investigating the financial, economic and social impacts the HPAI in developing countries. They concluded that ‘quantified economic losses in monetary terms are scarce in the literature. However, a wide literature stresses that poultry keeping has several advantages and functions that may not be expressed in pure monetary term’.
The findings of this survey quantitatively revealed the financial, economic and social impacts of the disease upon the farmer families in the course of the crisis. Other researchers (World Bank, Reference WORLD BANK2006; Geerlings, Reference GEERLINGS2006; Sur et al., Reference SUR, TASDEMIR, CEKIN, KIYAK, SENGIL, VAROL, KESKIN and LULECI2007) have so far explored the impacts of the AI epidemic and of the ensuing control measures upon families living in rural Turkey, and despite slight differences between the figures, they all arrived at conclusions supporting those of the present study.
• This study reveals that the main motive behind chicken farming in the countryside is nutritional needs. Several other studies conducted in Turkey have confirmed this conclusion. (Geerlings, Reference GEERLINGS2006; Sur et al., Reference SUR, TASDEMIR, CEKIN, KIYAK, SENGIL, VAROL, KESKIN and LULECI2007). Sur et al. (Reference SUR, TASDEMIR, CEKIN, KIYAK, SENGIL, VAROL, KESKIN and LULECI2007) articulate that, among the families included in the survey, 89% raise poultry only for their own nutritional needs and 9% both for nutrition and additional income. Geerlings (Reference GEERLINGS2006) reveals that, prior to the destruction of birds, the surveyed families obtained 40% of their total animal protein intake from poultry meat and eggs.
• Farming families not only suffered a loss of income because they could not produce chicken products anymore, but also they increasingly became much more dependent on the market in terms of nutrition; thus their food expenses increased.
• Since the bulk of the revenue deriving from chicken farming is used as pin money by housewives, it was discovered that this activity made serious contributions to the economic independence of women in the countryside. Consequently, the disappearance of chicken farming as a result of the pandemic is not only an economic but also a socially significant phenomenon.
• Families have a significant lack of information on the avian influenza and in order to eliminate this lack of information, television should play the primary role as a channel of communication.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) for the financial support of this study.
