Poultry farmers appeal for government assistance; say sector is dying

The government has been asked to take urgent steps to revamp and give a new lease of life to the nation’s collapsing poultry industry.

Spokesperson of the Ghana Poultry Farmers Association, John Bewuah Edusei, said local poultry farmers were struggling to be on their feet.

Addressing a press conference in Kumasi, he indicated that, if supported to operate more efficiently, the industry was one area that could create jobs and wealth for the people.

He appealed for closer examination of the ‘Broiler Project’, introduced in the year 2014, to get things streamlined - to aid the farmers to acquire processing plants, regulate the importation of chicken and provide a ready market for their products.

The goal of the project is to cut chicken importation by 40 per cent by assisting the farmers to go into large scale production of broilers to meet the local demand.

Mr Edusei said about 70 percent of the farmers who had produced birds for the last Christmas festivities had all gone bankrupt due to poor sales.

He added that “the investment we made, just went down the drain”.

He complained about what he said was the industry’s lack of recognition, saying, it was the only sector under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), which had been sidelined.

He maintained that not a single poultry farmer was recognized with an award at last year’s Farmers’ Day Celebration.

Ghana has averagely been importing about 250,000 metric tons of chicken and five million day-old chicks annually.

He said the nation could learn from neighbouring countries like Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Nigeria, where chicken importation had been banned to save the local industry.

He noted that for every one million broilers produced locally, close to about 100, 000 jobs could be created along the production value chain.