There’s an interesting little film from the Ecologist Film Unit over at The Guardian, about the Giriraja chicken breed. ((I’d embed the movie, but I can’t see how.)) It’s an interesting take on an old story; that a little improvement to local resources can make a huge difference to the lives of poor rural families.
Not a lot of detail in the film; essentially it seems that a local breed of chicken known as the Giriraja, or Forest King, has been worked on by veterinarians at Bangalore University of Agricultural Sciences. They’re giving (selling?) chicks and advice to poor villagers, who are eating better and earning more.
Nothing wrong with that, except that the film puts all this in contrast to the industrialised chicken operations that are blooming in India, while at the same time seeming to suggest that this one breed could be the answer for poor people everywhere. That would be no better than industrial chickens. What poor people need, of course, is help to make better use of their own local chickens. And that is happening in all sorts of places: Uganda, Italy and Indonesia, for example