WEDNESDAY, 20th October, 2021: Many poultry farms across the country have collapsed as the prices of soybean and maize, the two main grains in poultry production, have increased by about 300 per cent and 170 per cent respectively.
This was confirmed by the Director-General, Poultry Association of Nigeria, Onallo Akpa during a telephone interview.
According to Akpa, most small-scale poultry farmers took the brunt of this inflation, as many had closed shop due to their inability to purchase feeds.
 He said the cost of production in poultry farming was about 80 per cent grain-based and that these grains were maize and soybeans.
He added that the prices of the grains were why the costs of eggs and chicken had been increasing steadily, stressing that poultry farmers in Nigeria were suffering the brunt.
He said, “The prices of egg and chicken have never gone beyond 15/20 per cent, but the price of maize in the last 12/15 months has increased by between 150 and 170 per cent. Soybeans is more than 300 per cent increase in the few months.
“Between October 2020 and today, the price of soybean per metric tonne or per kilo has moved up by 250 per cent where available. So, what do you do?”
Speaking on the number of poultry farms that may have closed down due to the rising cost of feeds, the PAN DG said, “A lot of farms are closing down because the business is no longer sustainable.
“People are finding it difficult to feed their chicken and make the required margins. But you cannot have the number of closed farms because we have practitioners who operate farms in their backyards.
“When such persons are unable to feed their birds and shut down operations, it won’t be easy to know all of them nationwide. So, what we do is to look at the demand for feeds, vaccines, disinfectants and drugs.
“The demands for these items are falling down on daily basis because people are closing down their farms. So the fact is that small scale producers who do not know much about efficiency are closing down.”
On whether poultry farmers were interfacing with the government on the matter, Akpa replied in the affirmative, adding that one of such engagements led to the release of 10,000 metric tonnes of maize to poultry farmers.
He, however, noted that the annual demand for maize by poultry farmers in Nigeria was 4.5 million metric tonnes.