Poultry Farmers Lament Feed Price Hike

The high cost of raw materials used for feeds production has been identified as the major factor stifling the poultry industry which, If not checked, could lead to the collapse of the sub-sector.

The president Rumuezim Co-operative Society, Ashford Nweneka, who made the remark in Port Harcourt when The Tide visited the poultry farm on Monday, said that for many months now, poultry farmers in the state have been groaning over the high cost of raw materials for production of feeds.

He noted that prices of  maize, soya beans seed and soya beans meals soared by 100 percent at the turn of the year and are rising even faster, propelled even further by the rising energy prices, pointing out that poultry farmers had to absorb these increase without being able to increase the price of a crate of eggs or chicken.

According to him, “when you consider that feed makes up to 70 per cent of the total cost of productions, it then becomes clear why this drastic increase in price of the raw materials is of serious concern. As most new materials are transported from the North, the increase in diesel cost by 74 per cent has escalated the situation, as well as eroded profit margin,” he added.

He explained that unlike other farmers, the poultry farmer has a peculiar problem, “you can not shut down operation or slow down production due to unfavorable conditions farmers can not also store their products as they are best sold fresh,” saying that if the crisis continues unchecked till November it could spell doom for Nigerians as most of the farmers will have to close down or operate at low capacity, forcing the prices of poultry products to go up.

The farmer said, “we have been barely surviving because the profit has been totally wiped out by the high cost of materials. At the moment we are selling lower than the cost of production. What we put in to produce a crate of egg is about N620 and we sell less than that.”

He appealed to Government to come to their aid by subsidising the price of the raw matierals so that it could be affordable to poultry farmers in the state.