35 of 42 poultry farms at Atwima district have shut down – National Poultry Farmers Association
Victor Oppong Adjei, Chairman of the National Association of Poultry Farmers, has said the unprecedented rise in input costs is suffocating Ghana’s poultry industry.
The Chairman who was speaking in an interview on 3FM on April,20,2022 revealed that 35 out of 42 poultry farms in the Ashanti Region’s Atwima District have shut down due to a lack of essential inputs such as maize and soya.
He lamented that “The poultry industry in Ghana is collapsing. The 50kg bag of maize that was sold at ¢55 in 2020 now sells at ¢180, Soya has increased from ¢160 to ¢305 and the wheat brand has also rocketed from ¢20 to ¢53. This has affected poultry seriously and I can tell you the industry is collapsing”
He said that the spike in prices began in 2020, but there is no sign that it would fall down, making the situation serious for the poultry business.
Mr Adjei noted that “Currently what we are experiencing in Ghana is that prices of inputs keep on rocketing and is unprecedented in the history of the country and it is affecting the industry. Most are getting out of business, many of the farmers are reducing their stocks; we have a farmer in Dormaa who has a capacity of three hundred thousand birds but at the moment has only fifty thousand birds now”
As a result of the increase in input prices, Mr Adjei said their only option was to encourage egg dealers to raise their prices in response since farmers have struggled to meet head costs in recent months.
He mentioned that a crate of small size eggs now costs GHS30 instead of GHS23, while a crate of ‘unsorted eggs’ costs GHS 32 at the farm gate instead of 25 cedis.
To reduce the continuous price increase and further collapse of other farms, poultry farmers urge the government to rethink its flagship initiative, Planting for Food and Jobs, and increase fertilizer subsidies to assist them to plant more maize to supply the sector.
