Backyard chicken farming is as an effective tool for poverty reduction in rural areas, by providing living to resource poor communities; it is an important source of extra cash income other than eggs and meat for family consumption. The present study was carried out to assess the role of backyard poultry farming in supplementing household economy of rural farmers dwelling in district Quetta, Pakistan. Information from ninety-nine randomly selected female backyard poultry farmers were gathered during November 2016 to March 2017. Owing to previous government and non-government interventions backyard poultry keeping was found as an established practice. Women were found the main custodian of backyard poultry birds and consequently were the main beneficiary of the activity. Poultry birds of Fayoumi and Golden / Rhode Island Red (RIR) breeds were the main types. Majority of the farmers reared these birds under scavenging conditions in combination with feeding on household left over dry bread (52%); most of the respondents (62%) were taking care of the birds by themselves which resulted in overall low production cost. Income included the earning received from sale of birds, eggs and the home consumption of poultry meat and eggs. Net income per annum per household was estimated as Pakistani Rupee (PKR) 79290/- (US$ 566). The estimated Rank Based Quotients (R.B.Q) based on farmers perception disclosed backyard poultry keeping as an important domestic source of meat and eggs with almost no or very little capital investment, ranked (I, 80%) followed by a substantial source of supplementary income and was ranked (II, 79%). Amongst the problems, disease outbreaks were the most prevailing problem (I, 90%) followed by unavailability of vaccines (II, 85%). The backyard poultry farming generated subsistence income and provided high quality valuable food that improved household nutrition.

The farm is an abstract category in Economic theory for describing agents managing farming activity, while the real governing structures are farms of different juridical types – physical persons, sole traders, cooperatives, ago=companies, etc. Most of the time, farm’s competitiveness is inadequately assessed through technical and accountancy efficiency, factors’ productivity, profitability, market shares, etc. because critical governance aspects are ignored. This article incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics assumptions and principles and tries to give new insights on the real competitiveness of economic organizations in modern agriculture.  It suggests a holistic framework for assessing farm’ competitiveness taking into account economic, financial, and governance efficiency, and evaluates absolute and comparative competitiveness of governing structures of Bulgarian farming. The novel assessment system includes four pillars, four criteria, 17 particular, and 5 integral indicators. The first-in-kind evaluation, based on survey data, found that the competitiveness of Bulgarian farms is good. The competitiveness of cooperatives is highest, followed by corporations and associations, sole traders, and physical persons. Critical for competitive positions of farms are: low productivity, income, financial security, and adaptability to natural environment, where public support and farms’ management strategies should be directed. Large shares of the country’s farms have low competitiveness, and if measures are not taken to improve management, restructuring, state support, etc., many farms will cease to exist in the near future. In some cases, other characteristics of governing structures like size, specialization, market orientation, and ecological location, are critical for determining competitiveness level. The suggested and successfully tested framework for assessing the competitiveness of farms should be further improved and applied more widely and periodically in the country and internationally. The precision and representativeness of the information used should also be improved by increasing the number of surveyed farms and their important characteristics. The later requires close cooperation with producer organizations, national agricultural advisory service, and other interested parties as well as extending and improving the system for collecting agro-statistical information in the country and the EU.