Agriculture
POULTRY Farmers Association of Nigeria (PAN), Kaduna State Chapter, has urged the State Government to support its members with micro-credit facilities to expand their businesses and to also meet market demand.
Musa Bala, the state Secretary of the association, made the call on Thursday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna.
“If the government can assist us in terms of soft loans, it would help in boosting our farms and in turn create employment opportunities for our youth,” Bala said.
He also urged the government to evolve a programme similar to the Anchor borrower’s programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria for poultry farmers in the state.
Bala said: “Government’s intervention and making resources available would make a huge impact on the lives of thousands of youths and farmers at large.”
According to him, the members were willing to take advantage of the shortfall in supply of poultry products in the country and increase production.
“The economic situation is affecting supply, because if every household could consume the right amount of eggs, farmers would not meet the supply demand.
”The lack of funding is a major obstacle for the more than 2,000 members of the association to achieve maximum production level.
“There are over 2,000 registered poultry farmers in the state, but most of them are winding up of their businesses due to lack of funding and other challenges,” the secretary decried.
Bala, however, said the members of the association produce 40,000 crates of eggs weekly, with 17,000 birds, adding, ”this is grossly inadequate for the increasing market demand.”
He identified the absence of clear regulations, frequent disease outbreaks and high cost of feed as some of the major challenges affecting poultry farming in the state.
Bala said that the association also faces challenges of power supply thereby limiting its ability to freeze the slaughtered chickens.
The secretary called for partnership with private investors to establish a one-stop-shop for birds to enable farmers to preserve the chickens.
He said that would help farmers to maintain the six circles of production in a year as demand increases. (NAN)
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Tags: Musa Bala
