Small farmers in Indonesia are benefiting from expert advice and new techniques from a grass roots breeding programme
Great Giant Livestock (GGL), a subsidiary of Gunung Sewu Group, is investing in a grass-roots breeding programme, targeting small farms and helping Indonesian farmers increase their herds.
Many small farms run two to three heads of cattle, with little knowledge of animal husbandry. Gunung Sewu Group are producers of tropical fruits and export on a very large scale. One technique that they use is to mix pineapple peel into feedlots to increase cattle strength.
Daya Ariasintawati, director of GGL, talked to ABC Rural about introducing stock with stronger genetics. "The cows are born bigger and they grow faster," she said.
"That's part of the teaching and how to do the breeding to avoid negative selections because they used to sell the good cattle for slaughter."
GGL are focused on teaching good practices to poorly educated farmers, or ones in need of modernisation. "We want to work with the farmers to define any opportunity to develop the business model, because if it's a charity it's not sustained," Ariasintawati stated. "Hopefully with this operation, with the very careful calculations, we can have a model that's beneficial for both parties."
"We train the farmers to not sell the cattle without our approval, the reason is not because we want to get them, but we want to assist them to not be spontaneous."
The Indonesian Government are making efforts to increase the national herd by creating these opportunities for these producers to help their farmers and export cattle to other countries such as Australia.
