I am Mr James I Njeru, 39, from Kenya. I hold a Higher Diploma in Community Development, a Certificate in Animal Health and Production, a Certificate in Agricultural Extension, and have undertaken several participatory courses in community projects.
Slaughtering is mostly done on the homestead and sometimes in slaughterhouse with low skilled staff, with the flaying, preservation, and processing leading to poor quality skins.
The market for rabbit skins is lacking a consistent channel, and is an inappropriate and imbalanced trading environment for stakeholders. Enabling fair competition is among many current challenges the rabbit-skin value chain experiences.
I therefore intend to produce high-quality leather and leather products from rabbit hides, depending on the market demand for various products.
Value adding provides for readily marketable products locally, regionally, and internationally. Besides the monetary value there are more benefits, like material self-life improvement, especially when waiting for market prices to improve.
There will be appropriate skin-harvesting techniques, which will open an important avenue to develop the project.
Involvement of the farmers in partnerships will be major and potentially revitalize the rabbit-hide production chain and also enhance value.
The motive will be to improve on the quality of the products in all stages of production via capacity improvement of flayers and traders between the links.
Rabbit husbandry and slaughtering has been quite active in Kenya but the loss within the value chain is immense. Many have been going to waste, thus quite a huge number of incomes are wasted unknowingly, but value-adding can be used to change the lives of communities.
More incomes will be generated through better sales of products, potential gain from value-adding, and recovery of losses and quick win possibilities.
Consequently, it will have impact on youths and rabbit farmers through employment creation and increased incomes.
Training workshops for producers and flayers on best whole process on production of quality skins, inbuilt processing techniques, product design, and development and product marketing.
Training will include: quality enhancement of rabbit skin/hides, product design and development, available preserved raw skins, linkages with rabbit farmers as the major producers, slaughter slabs, and linkages with mini tanning cottage industry.
Success indicators
Production of quality leather and leather products
Number of products produced
Increased sales
Amount of money in the bank
Employment creation
Number of farmers whose living standard has improved
Market outlets linkages
Market level and outputs identified.
Budget
Training workshops to producers in all stages of production chain USD 800, 1stquarter
Procurement and supply USD 2,000, 1st quarter
Purchase of more skins/hides USD 300, 2nd quarter
Production of leather and leather products USD 1,100, 2nd quarter Marketing logistics USD 800 (will be continuous)
Blogpost and picture submitted by James I Njeru (Kenya): jimsonjero[at]yahoo.com
The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.
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value addition in products of any kind enhances marketing as a result income increases, so the proposal can be benefitial to the targeted