An example of such economic unit can be a small scale poultry farm (5,000-10,000 chickens) that is perhaps, integrated with limited pisciculture (fish farming.) The chickens take approximately 6 months to grow to marketable size and require approximately 3-4x their body weight in feed. The market price of chickens, however, is approximately 7-8x the price of grain. In addition, the waste serves as fertilizer for fish ponds (the fish feeds on the resulting algae growth as well as undigested or partially digested matter in the chicken waste.)
It is hoped that once past the development phase, such farms could be established with initial investments of $5,000-$10,000 each. It is also hoped that such farms will generate approximately $10,000-$20,000 of annual revenues ($1 per chicken, two ‘crops’ per year) and achieve breakeven in two years. It is expected that approximately 40% of the revenues will be redistributed as wages amongst the workers who would ideally come from the immediate local area. While we have NO DATA at this point, we hope that at least half the wages would go to the lowest economic rungs in the village which would result in significant improvement in their incomes. (A usable approximation would be an average annual per capita income of $200 (60% of national average) in the villages and an average population of 1,000 in a ‘model’ village. This would mean that ignoring any multiplier effect, the village income would increase by 5-10% from the establishment of such a farm. To the extent the impact is focused amongst the lowest quartile of villagers, the impact could be as high as a 50% improvement in income.
Over time, we expect to supplement the ‘model farm’ with ancillary functions such as mandatory schooling (provided free on site), modest nutritional enhancements (a free or a reduced price chicken every month) and very basic healthcare (family planning). At present, all of this is at a conceptual stage.