Consumers of egg and other poultry products should expect a possible 50% increase in prices this Christmas season, the players in the industry are predicting.
According to the Bono regional organiser of the Poultry Farmers Association, Johnson Yeboah, the expected hike is as a result of high cost of feed and other inputs needed to run the business.
“If we move to the feed input dealers, every second, every hour prices are moving up and it is affecting the industry so much such that a lot of farms are folding up. If you pick about 10 farms, seven or eight are folding up, it’s serious,” Yeboah told Asaase News.
“I bought soya bean at GHC370 two weeks ago, but as we speak, we are buying at GHC580. So, imagine two or three weeks interval and an item increasing to this level not to talk of feed grams.
“You know we have about seven items when it comes to poultry feed. We have to put together a whole lot of raw materials before we can get quality feed and each of these items comes with a cost and everyday the cost is moving up,” said Yeboah.
The poultry industry in Ghana for sometime now has been hit with challenges, forcing some farmers to cut down on production while others have folded up. The challenges include high cost of feed which constitute about 60 to 70% of production cost.
The increase in feed cost is fueled by high prices of maize and soya. Aside from this, the poultry industry experienced an outbreak of bird flu which led to the loss of thousands of birds across the country.
According to poultry farmers in the region, from December, broiler which currently sells between GHC90 and GHC100 is likely to shoot up to GHC150 while a layer will go for GHC60.
A crate of egg will also sell at GHC40.
Daniel Donkor
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