Poultry crises: The home-grown solutions recommended at Ogun Show

From Peter Moses, Abeokuta   The 2021 edition of the annual three-day Nigeria Poultry Show (NPS), an exhibition of the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), has been concluded in Abeokuta, Ogun State, with stakeholders recommending home-grown solutions to tame the challenges confronting the industry. Nigeria’s poultry industry which contributes about 25 per cent of agricultural […]

From Peter Moses, Abeokuta

 

The 2021 edition of the annual three-day Nigeria Poultry Show (NPS), an exhibition of the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), has been concluded in Abeokuta, Ogun State, with stakeholders recommending home-grown solutions to tame the challenges confronting the industry.

Nigeria’s poultry industry which contributes about 25 per cent of agricultural GDP to the economy and worth over N1.6tn is battling for survival owing to its many crises.

Among the challenges are smuggling, high rate of disease and pest attacks, high rate of mortality, high cost of poultry feeds, supply of poor quality chicks and inadequate poultry extension services.

The outbreak of COVID-19 last year compounded the woes of the industry, with PAN warning against the industry’s collapse.

The President of PAN, Ezekiel Ibrahim, last year, explained that in the heart of the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown, the poultry industry suffered big losses due to the restriction of movement of goods and services which included eggs, day-old chicks, poultry feeds and other essential inputs for poultry production.

 

This period also saw the closure of small and medium-size poultry farms, threatening millions of jobs.

“Billions of naira were lost in sales of eggs and chickens, resulting in the closure of many small and medium-size poultry farms,” he said.

Poultry stakeholders who converged on Abeokuta reexamined the challenges crippling the sector and proffered solutions.

The NPS is an annual “ritual” organised for stakeholders in the industry to showcase their products, exhibit latest technologies, among others.

Like previous editions, this year’s attracted poultry farmers, both local and international, and investors thronged the ancient city for the show.

Commissioners for Agriculture in Ogun and Ekiti states, Dr Adeola Odedina and Prince Olabode Adetoyi respectively, were present at the event, while their Lagos counterpart, Mrs Abisola Olusanya, sent a representative.

This year’s show focused on the theme: “De-Risking the Nigerian Poultry Industry: Stabilising Critical Inputs and Market Prices for Stability”.

The Chairman of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), Dr Olalekan Odunsi, said the theme was extracted from the various “plagues ravaging the industry, with an objective that if the issue of risk could be minimised or eliminated, others will be solved at subsequent events.

“The global health hazard of 2020 posed threats on the world economy where the poultry industry also had its own share, which again compounded the inputs challenges of the industry.

“Market prices of inputs, especially maize and soya, rose as much as by over 150 per cent, which nearly brought a collapse to the poultry industry.”

Experts at the show admitted that Nigeria’s poultry industry is crisis-ridden. They also spoke in unison that the challenges are not peculiar to Nigeria, as other parts of the world have their own fair shares.

The President of Animal Science, Raymond Isiadinso, pointed out that Brazil, Holland, Belgium, China, among other countries, have their own challenges to contend with, but that, “The world isn’t collapsing.”

Speaking on the theme, the Country Representative, Nigerian International Livestock Research Institute, Dr Tunde Amole, noted that there was daily increase in consumption of animals and their products which required continual changes and improvements in the industry.

He said, “It is suicidal if we refuse to change, even as things are changing in the industry. There is a global crisis, so it is not only Nigeria that is feeling the heat of the feeds crisis.”

He, therefore, called on poultry farmers and stakeholders to adjust to the new normal, invent sustainable ways to address the global crisis, look inwards to areas of comparative advantage and solve the problem of the food crisis both for human and livestock consumption.

He further suggested the use of cassava peel as part of components of producing poultry feeds to reduce total dependence on maize, advocating for the need to bridge the gap between academia’s research and industrial operations.

According to him, more than 15 million metric tons of cassava peel are exported from Nigeria to Benin Republic annually.

He said, “We must learn to look inward and solve our problems in our own way. No solutions will come from abroad, we must look for local solutions.”

The General Manager of Premier Feeds Limited (PFL), one of the major producers of poultry feeds in Nigeria, Austin Dalyop, lamented that, “Everything has changed. If you look at the entire value chain, cost of transportation and others, how much is diesel today – N340 to N380 for a litre – if you are to take money from the bank for your procurement of raw materials, N1bn will only give you 5,000 tonnes of maize,  and with a billion naira you can’t buy 4,000 tons of soya.

Mr Dalyop further said the industry would “definitely collapse” if more Nigerians failed to go into agriculture as an alternative to save the situation.

He explained that, “How many feed millers have closed down business today, many and many more will, except we, like the other man said, we must be innovative, we must find alternative raw materials to reduce cost.

“The only success factors for the poultry industry that will determine our tomorrow is if we increase the productivity of our maize and soya. If we don’t, the industry will definitely collapse, but if we increase it, it will get stronger.

“The middle class should also go into farming, we have left farming to a very small number of the society that uses anyhow and manual operations; it will not take us anywhere until we begin to mechanise agriculture.”

A former PAN President, Dr Ayoola Oduntan, called on farmers to keep faith despite the challenges confronting the sector.

Dr Oduntan said, “Let’s continue to have faith. No matter what happens, 200 million Nigerians have nowhere to go; they must feed. And we are the ones to provide the food for them, and in the process, many of us will become multi-millionaires.”

He, therefore, called on the government to create an enabling environment for the poultry industry to thrive.

According to him, insecurity is another challenge and that “there is need for government to help us so that farmers can do their business in a safe environment.

“We want government to give us the enabling environment. This will include friendly interest rates from banks so that farmers can produce and make profit. Our major challenge is raw materials, especially maize; we don’t have adequate maize and soya beans.

“I also want to advise farmers to improve their production efficiency, because if we don’t ensure good management, our production efficiency will definitely go down, and now that the cost of inputs has eroded our profit, we must put in adequate effort and make sure we produce well.”

In their separate remarks, Ogun and Ekiti states Commissioners for Agriculture, Dr Odedina and Prince Adetoyi respectively, expressed their states’ commitment towards improved production in livestock through Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Dr Odedina noted that Ogun State, being the largest producer of broilers and eggs in Nigeria, had successfully organised a broiler project in which 45 youths were trained and made to rear 1,000 broilers each, and that they made an average profit of N150,000 in three cycles.

He added that the broiler project would be replicated in all the local government areas of the state, while the successful youths that had been made broiler ambassadors would train others.