Poultry: Farmers cry for support to increase paltry 5% local production

Poultry farmers in Ghana are calling on government to create an environment that empowers the local farmer to produce enough to meet local demand.

Only 5 percent of the about 300,000 metric tons of poultry consumed in the country is produced in Ghana. Napoleon Agyeman Oduro, Vice Chairman of Poultry Farmers Association of Ghana lamented: “We are consuming almost 300 metric tonnes of chicken and we produce a woefully inadequate percentage of it in Ghana.”

He therefore advised, “if we have celebrated farmer’s day for almost three decades and we can’t produce all we consume that we should go back to the drawing board again”.

Mr. Agyeman Oduro wants government to formulate policies that will empower the local poultry farmer to produce enough to meet local demand. “We need policies that will enable the sub sector to produce well.

We need polices to reverse the situation, to create jobs, to enhance the developmental agenda of the government and to make the poultry sub-sector viable”.

According to him, “if we are importing 95 percent of the chicken we eat then it means we are putting money in the pocket of the investor in foreign land”. The call is coming a time the country marks Farmers Day to acknowledge its hardworking farmers.