Dr Olalekan Odunsi, the South-West general-secretary, Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), has called on government to facilitate the importation of animal grade maize and soya meals.
Odunsi said the importation would save the poultry industry from collapsing. He said the urgent importation of animal feed grade of maize would sustain the over 50million layers, 100million broilers, 1million breeders and other classes of poultry until the next harvest season.
He also urged the government, in the interim, to enforce a ban on export of soya, seed and processed soya bean meal.
He enjoined governors in the region to put as much efforts to the cultivation of maize as they had done with rice.
Odunsi stressed the need for a strong collaboration among maize farmers in Nigeria, soya bean farmers and others. He said acute scarcity and astronomical prices of soya beans and maize would threaten additional five million poultry jobs in the short term if the government does not intervene.
“Today, maize is sold at N210, 000/MT in most states of South-West, soya meal N240, 000/MT.
“Due to the importance of these two items, the price of poultry feed has continuously been on the increase from N2750 to N3000 in April N2020 to N4850 to N5300 now.
In December, most farmers were unable to sell their broilers because the cost of production was higher than what an average Nigerian could afford.
Presently, egg is going out of the reach of an average family with ideal price at N1, 300.
So we really need government’s intervention to save the current 10million jobs in the poultry value chain of our economy,’’ he said (NAN).
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