Bill Gates once explained why he would raise 'chickens'

Gates had outlined the supreme benefits a flock can offer impoverished families.

(Web Desk) - Prime Minister Imran Khan met with extreme mockery from the people when he laid out his plan to provide chicken and eggs to rural woman so that they can start their own poultry business and become self-sufficient.

The criticism however; did not went well with the premier who responded with a withering comeback and cited Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates’ poultry initiative ‎taken back in 2016.

Khan’s idea is exact similar to Gates’ poverty alleviation strategy involving poultry farming to empower poor families.

On June 7, 2016, Gates outlined the supreme benefits a flock can offer impoverished families in his blog post titled ‘Why I would raise chickens’.

He mentioned four reasons behind his idea which were:

• Chickens are easy and inexpensive to take care of.
• They’re a good investment.
• They help keep children healthy.
• They empower women.

"These chickens are multiplying on an ongoing basis, so there’s no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens," Gates said as reported by Business Insider.

Families that keep chickens can use the birds for their meat (either to consume or sell), and live chickens can serve as a currency to pay for things like school fees or repairs. In addition, they are cheap, easy to care for, and can empower women to take active entrepreneurial roles in their community.

"The chickens are almost entirely a women’s activity, because it involves being around the household all day long," Gates said.

Gates hoped the idea will help people lift themselves out of poverty. He called it a "bootstrap" solution.

"It’s the classic thing of teaching someone how to fish," Gates said. "Now, if you don’t live near water, then it’s pretty hard to fish. But the parable could’ve been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken."

Donating chicks to poor nations

Two days later, Gates while speaking in front of chickens pecking and clucking in a New York City skyscraper, announced plans to donate 100,000 chicks to poor nations in an effort to end extreme poverty.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in a statement that the chicks will go to rural areas in two dozen developing countries from Burkina Faso to Bolivia, where the Heifer International charity manages breeding operations and distribution.

Raising and selling chickens can lift families out of poverty, and a farmer breeding 250 chickens a year could make $1,250 U.S., said the Foundation.

“There’s no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,” said Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp.

Referring to the proverb that teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime, he said: “The parable could have been stated in terms of giving somebody a chicken and showing them how to raise chickens.”

--- with inputs from Reuters.