Poultry farmers in the country are worried about the continuous rising cost of poultry feed, thereby calling on the Federal Government to assist in finding a lasting solution. The National President of the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Sunday Ezeobiora in a chat with FarmingFarmersFarms, lamented that this and other challenges such as; high cost of production, funding, infrastructure and marketing are some of the challenges presently facing the poultry industry, which were greatly affecting the agriculture sector and that if these challenges are not handled well, they may kill the poultry business in Nigeria.
Ezeobiora noted that the sub-sector, which is worth N10 trillion and had provided direct and indirect jobs to over 20 million people in Nigeria, should not be allowed to collapse. The PAN President noted further that there was a need for the government to ban the export of soybeans to safeguard the poultry industry from collapse. He, however, warned that the issue of removing the ban on poultry products and its negative implication on the poultry industry would be enormous and grave. He thereby advised the Federal Government to halt the idea of opening its borders for poultry and poultry products importation, stressing that opening of borders to importation will erode the achievements recorded in the sub sector within the last few years.
The Chairman of the South-West Zone of PAN, Rev. Gideon Oluleye, advised the government to find lasting solutions to confronting the challenges facing the poultry industry and revive it. He called on the government to increase funding of agriculture, particularly the poultry subsector and also create a market for farmers through policies like the school feeding programme, using poultry products to feed Internally-Displaced Persons (IDP) centres, and the correctional centres among others. Oluleye stated that if there are concerted plans in this direction, the farmers would not have the problem of sales.
