MoFA rolls out project to revamp poultry sector
The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) has begun the implementation of the first phase of a poultry intensification scheme under the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) as part of efforts to revamp the local broiler industry.
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In line with that, some selected commercial anchor poultry farmers in the Ashanti Region have taken delivery of the first consignment of about 130,000 day-old chicks.
Other regions to benefit from the scheme are Bono, Eastern, Greater Accra, Central and Volta.
The MOFA-FSRP scheme is being implemented in phases under a World Bank funding, with each beneficiary receiving input credit in the form of about 160,000 day-old chicks, 180,000 kilogrammes of feed, as well as supplies of vaccines, in the first round of allocation.
The beneficiaries would also be trained in best practices and climate-smart technology, including accessing matching grants to procure equipment to support post-production processing and cold storage.
The scheme targets the production of approximately two million broiler birds on a yearly basis under a $12.5m World Bank facility.
Eligibility
The programme has selected 22 commercial anchor farmers nationwide to be supported to produce, process and market two million birds annually over the next three years.
The criteria for participation in the scheme demands that applicants must have been in the broiler production, processing and marketing within the last five years. They must also be registered with the Registrar-General or other statutory body, have linkages with smallholder farmers and must be in the databases of the district directorate of Agriculture in their operational areas.
The other criteria are that their establishments must include at least 10 per cent women and 10 per cent youth in both upstream and downstream of the value chain, and must be compliant with requirements of regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Ghana Fire Service, the Food and Drugs Authority, the Ghana Standards Authority and the World Bank.
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The scheme feeds into the Planning for Food and Jobs Two, which targets poultry self-sufficiency output of 400,000 metric tonnes per year by 2028.
Objective
During a tour of Rockland Farms, one of the anchor farms at Nsuta in the Sekyere Central district, the Operations Manager of FSRP, Daniel Philip Laryea, said the objective of the programme was to reduce food insecurity and improve the country’s capacity at resilience to climate variability, especially for smallholders farmers.
He said there were four selected commodities for the project in the country- rice, maize, soya bean and poultry. “On poultry, the focus is on broiler production and rice and maize which, apart from being staple foods, have been strategically selected to support the poultry industry,” the manager added.
Mr Laryea said the 22 selected farmers from the six beneficiary regions would work with their outgrowers to produce a total of two million broilers this year. A poultry specialist with the Animal Production Department of MoFA, Ricky Aboagye Poku, said currently, the country imported about $400 million worth of poultry products annually.
The FSRP is a World Bank-funded programme and promoted by ECOWAS for participating countries to strengthen food system risk management, improve the sustainability of the agricultural productive base and harmonise agricultural markets in the West African sub-region.
Participating countries include Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sierra Leone, Togo and Chad. In Ghana, it is focused on intensified production, marketing and consumption of wholesome rice, maize, broiler poultry, soya beans and tomatoes.