Kokopo based Growers Association Incorporation (GAI) has achieved a milestone, producing chickens locally and selling for affordable prices to the Kokopo communities.

The project surely undergoes progress and is a few steps forward ensuring that East New Britain is self-sufficient on food, that is the consumption of chickens.

The GAI poultry venture began with the support of the World Bank funded program through the PACD-Cocoa project where they are one of the 18 partnerships in the country assisted with funding to roll out poultry project as well as cocoa in the Duke of York Island of Kokopo District.

Under the leadership of Simon Arnold, who is the Executive Manager, they are not only assisting farmers to plant cocoa and farm poultry but also to treat these opportunities as a business or small SME and manage them sustainably to support their immediate families, wards and more widely.

GAI has been supported with just over a million kina to roll out their various activities in their outline contract and budget.

For Growers poultry project they have 100 farmers, and each farmer is entitled to received 50 day-old-chicks, 4 lots of feeders, drinkers, full feed supply (starter and finisher) storage containers and a solar light.

Growers purchase the chicks, supply to the farmers and when the chicks reach the weight requirement, they harvest from farmers and go for processing at the mini abattoir.

Currently Growers poultry team are harvesting chickens from their farmers, slaughtered, clean, processed, prepare and packed at their small processing plant facility that was purchase with the financial support from the World Bank through the PACD-Cocoa PMU.

The chickens are on sale now they are selling K22 per kilo as well as packed 500 gram for K10 and 800 grams for K15 plus a variety of price ranger at their Kokopo office near the Cocoa Board office.

This exercise has bring a lot of excitement to the farmers as well as people in the province, as this is actually the first of its kind for a local farmer representative organization helping smallholder farmers is charting a new course for sustainable farming and diversification and commercialization.

A farmer Ignasia Ginigil has expressed her gratitude to the World Bank through the PACD Cocoa project for supporting her with her poultry project. She also thanked GAI for their continuous field visits and trainings that have put confidence in them to pursue this project for the first time.

“I am a cocoa farmer but now with this new poultry project I am happy and thankful that this is another income revenue to my family to sustain our livelihood in these challenging times,” said Ignasia. The project initiatives aim to increase cocoa production and improve livelihoods and signifies a significant step towards enhancing agricultural sustainability and economics in PNG’s rural communities.