Egg glut: Farmers call for immediate intervention

CORONA virus (COVID-19) has dealt a big blow to the poultry sector in Ghana and some poultry farmers are counting their losses following the egg glut that has hit the country.

Thousands of eggs produced by these farmers stand the risk of rotting due to lack of buyers. They said currently, they were compelled to sell a crate of eggs between GH¢8 and GH¢10 cedis against GHC¢17 and GH¢18 due to the corona virus (CODIV-19) effects.

“This is a total loss. We are only incurring losses. Government should intervene immediately to enable us farmers and all players along the value chain to sustain the sector. We need some flexibility especially at this time to diversify our businesses. At least, we can decide to go into broiler production,” the Chief Executive Officer of Boris B’s Farms and Veterinary Supplies Ghana Ltd, Dr Boris Baidoo, stated in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS on June 10, 2020 in Accra.

He said among the major customers of eggs were the educational institutions, hoteliers and other food vendors. But due to the COVID-19 disease and the subsequent restrictions imposed on these institutions, demand for eggs has reduced drastically.

He commended the government for introducing the Rearing for Food and Jobs initiative also aimed at reviving the poultry sector, and said: “This is the time for government to put more pragmatic policies in place to support local producers to be able to increase production and encourage consumption of local products to help reduce imports”.

He argued that the local industries had great potential to be competitive and also create jobs provided they were given subsidies in the form of soft loans.

“Worldwide there are subsides. We appreciate all that government is doing but then on the side of rearing it is a difficult task due to issues such as feed and utility costs. Government should give us some grant and reduce utility bills of poultry farmers because we are feeding the country,” he added.

Another female poultry farmer at Anthony Farms at Mataheko-Afienya, Mrs Claudia Addison, in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS, said she was also hit by the glut after the lockdown because on a normal day she produces about 140 crates of eggs daily but kept a five-day stock unsold once upon a time.

She deduced the main cause for the glut to the closure of markets during the lockdown, in addition to schools.   

“What I’ll say I did differently was to go all out there to get people to buy. I worked extra especially through the various social media platforms,” she said.  

Perennial glut
Yearly there is a glut of eggs from April to November but this year is worse because of COVID-19. Previously, Ghanaian egg producers said they could export to Aflao and Burkina Faso but were not able to do so because borders were closed.  

Over 500,000 eggs nationwide remain unsold while there is a daily add on.  

Women who are the major egg sellers have been the hardest hit in the value chain.  

An egg seller at the Makola market, Madam Agatha Owusu, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that eggs that should have been bought within a day now last over five days because customers do not come to buy.

Even when they come, she said, they buy on credit and which repayment becomes difficult and erodes their profit.

“Previously, I could a sell about 500 crates but now I struggle to sell 50 a week. Most of the eggs we throw away, especially broken ones because there is nothing we can do with it. We are losing. Most of us are owing poultry farmers because our customers are also owing us,” she lamented.  

“Government should come to our aid and buy and distribute to institutions such as orphanages, prisons, hospitals and for frontline staff. There is also the less privilege that government could buy and give to,” she appealed.

There are about 78 million poultry birds in Ghana with 80 per cent of them being layers.
-    60 per cent of poultry frozen meat from the United States of America and Europe
-    Ghana spends about 400 million dollars annually on these imports
-    About 70 per cent of day-old chicks are also imported   

Recommendation
Mrs Addison said dealing with the challenge of egg glut should not be a one-off solution.

“If inputs come down it will translate automatically into cost of production. So, if the government can assist us especially with inputs that are not produced here by reducing import duty. They are doing well with the maize though,” she said.   

The Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana (CAG), Mr Anthony Morrison, in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra on Wednesday, June 10, 2020, called for a local content policy for the agricultural sector to solve some of those challenges.

He said such a policy was needed for increase in productivity, value addition and markets.

He deduced that the current egg situation called for a local content policy that encompassed a post-harvest technology such as refrigerated warehousing system.  

“If we are producing eggs in the region of 500,000 and they are all going bad due to lack of market, that’s over millions of Ghana cedis lost. So, if we have a refrigerated system that can keep two to 10 million eggs at a time for say a month, we don’t have a problem,” he stated.

He added that such a system would offer poultry farmers a chance to register to keep the excess eggs they produced for government to sell at a later date and pay them.

Another way to go about the issue of egg glut is by adding value to it, either by boiling of processing into powder.

“This is where we need to bring in value addition players such as bakers, those in confectionery so that they can also make use of the powdered egg,” he said.

For her part, the President of the apex body of Women in Poultry Value Chain (WIPVaC), Mrs Victoria Norgbey, emphasised the need to develop the poultry sector along the entire value chain.

She said farmers’ access to markets should be enhanced and there should be attractive incentives to the youth to take up poultry as a profession looking at the linkages.

“By now we should be having factories that can turn our eggs into egg powder so that when we have glut, we can process into powder and use it later. We need to train our farmers especially those involved in broiler production to produce to meet standards,” she corroborated.

She added that government should develop and implement good policies that would offer them an enabling environment to produce.

“If we are producing and the import is still coming it will not help us. The ECOWAS Veterinary Pharmaceutical Protocol, if it is also implemented, will help us to get quality vaccines to work with,” she said.  

writer’s email: amaachia@gmail.com