MITIGATING MIGRATION THROUGH BRIDGING PRODUCTION GAP IN LIVESTOCK SECTOR

Abstract

Livestock productivity is one of the solutions to mitigate human migration from rural to urban areas. Livestock is the major contributor towards value addition in the agriculture sector and also in social build-up. It plays versatile role in rural life by providing food, income, employment, fuel, fertilizer, transportation and power. It has been serving as a source of income and food security for centuries. However, in present situation it is not playing its role as it could have. This field is deficient in production, management, marketing and information creating a big yield gap as compared to potential one. Less income leads to alternative strategies of livelihood for rural people, resulting migration to opt some other professions in cities. This migration creates a huge depression on urban resources including space, food and sanitation. Present paper focuses how to overcome migration through increasing livestock production and sustaining farmers at their villages to earn livelihood in a secure manner. All this inculcates towards encouragement of livestock farmers to carry on livestock farming inspite of migration. Present study was conducted in Tehsil Nankana Sahib. Out of its 34 rural union councils, four were selected randomly. From each selected union council, three villages were selected randomly. From each selected village ten livestock farmers were selected by random sampling technique thereby making a sample size of 120 respondents. Data were collected through interview schedule and analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to draw conclusions. It was found that people were migrating towards cities due to many problems in the livestock sector. Migration is a problem which affects cities also. Proper steps need to be taken to address the issues of migration and people leaving up livestock farming.