In India the farmers will pay the rat catchers something like 25 cents for each rat they get. Plus, the rat catchers get to keep any rice the rats have stored away. The main method of rat catching is to smoke out their rat holes, then dig them up to get the dead rats and the rice.
One new advance has been a smoker machine to kill the rats - $25. They are funded by micro loans. Now a rat catcher can double his take. And not only feed himself on rat meat and rice, but the wife can sell rat meat and rice.
Seriously. One quote had the guy saying something like “And now my children won’t have to be rat catchers like me. Now I can afford to send them to college.” (”College” in India is like High School to us.)
Apropos of nothing in particular, I recollect a story from long ago about a guy who thought he’d come up with the perfect business plan. He’d raise rats and cats. He’d feed the rats to the cats, skin the cats and feed the cat corpses to the rats, and make the cat skins into cat fur coats. Pure profit! It foundered on the fact that no one was interested in cat fur coats.