By Bisola Adeyemo
Ogun State Government has said that its administration would continue to boost the state poultry sector in its agricultural agenda for food security, job creation through partnership with private sector and international bodies.
The Ogun State Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr. Adeola Odedina, stated this at the 2021 Poultry Show with the theme: “De-Risking the Nigerian Poultry Industry: Stabilising Critical Inputs and Market Prices for Sustainability.”
While delivering his goodwill message, Odedina noted that Ogun State as the largest producer of broiler and egg in Nigeria, has successfully organised a broiler project, in which 45 youths were trained and made to rear 1,000 broilers each, as they made an average profit of N150,000 in three cycles, AllAfrica reports.
He also added that all the local governments in the state would benefit from the project.
Speaking on assisting farmers, Odedina said all farmers in the state will be assisted by creating enabling environment for them to be able to produce food and raw materials towards important substitution, quality control and local value-chain operations, to combat looming food crisis in the country.
Speaking also the Chairman of the 2021 Poultry Show, Mr Olalekan Odunsi, stated that poultry farmers are facing lots of socio-economic challenges which is negatively affecting the industry.
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Odunsi, who lamented that insecurity, high cost of animal feeds and exchange rate had forced some poultry farmers out of business, added that the challenges had cut number of poultry farmers producing eggs, chickens and other products as many of them had closed shop.
He said “A lot of farms have closed down due to high cost of feeds occasioned by huge cost of maize and soya. While appealing to the federal government to ban exportation of soybeans and maize to allow farmers to produce for local use.
“Aside the issue of maize and soya, prices of other ingredients being used in the production of poultry feeds, are on the high side.
“What is also impeding more on poultry production is foreign exchange. A lot of things we used are imported only maize and soybeans are grown in the country, all the additives, multivitamin, medicament that we are using, we import all of them.
“Even the fish feeds, we are not producing locally, we import. So, all these are impeding very much on the cost of production.
“So, let’s brace up, but we will try our best to make sure people have good meat to eat.”
Meanwhile, the Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), urged federal government to prohibiting export of maize, in order to make the commodity available for poultry feed millers in Nigeria.
