In Uganda, livestock ownership is significantly associated with a lower prevalence of stunting in children making it a visibly beneficial path to reducing malnutrition (Mosites et al.). Household livestock ownership is classified as ownership of sheep, goats, cattle, and chickens. While livestock ownership can come with other challenges such as exposure to fecal matter and zoonotic pathogens, most families who own chickens, sheep, goats, or cattle greatly benefit from the direct source of protein in the meat, milk, and eggs, compared to families who do not own any livestock. Poverty in Uganda is primarily seen in rural areas, where families have to ability to keep small amounts of livestock with the proper resources.

For those Ugandan families who own chickens, finding adequate feed can be difficult and cost prohibitive due to spoilage of commercially available feeds. The Cal Poly Insects Group is proposing mealworm breeding as a low cost, self-sustaining method of producing protein-rich chicken feed at the ground level for rural impoverished Ugandans. We hope to design a low cost and easy to maintain mealworm breeding bin that is financially accessible to low income, livestock owning families in Uganda for supplementary use as chicken feed. Increasing the protein levels in chickens' feed will work from the bottom up to benefit the nutrition of the whole family, and creating a self-sustaining method of feed production via mealworm breeding will cut feed purchasing costs for the chicken owners.