Poultry Farmers Meeting Poorly Attended by Brent Simon & Carol-Faye Bynoe-George
Ministry of Agriculture for over a year held a series of poultry seminars. These forums held once a month from 5:00 to 7:00p.m, were hosted mainly by Dr. Chere Kellman/Veterinary Officer. Unfortunately, giving of her time, preparing information sheets, power point presentations were not considered important by the intended audience. With over a hundred registered poultry farmers, the most ever attended was less than ten percent. Month after month, unwaveringly Dr. Kellman persevered, hopeful that the producers would give a little of their time for knowledge and training that would be beneficial to them, their businesses, food security and public health. However, despite the current “Egg turmoil”, sadly this was all in vain for the attendance decreased further to a mere two percent.
Reportedly, there has been some issues surrounding the importation of eggs, the price consumers were paying for these eggs and increase in operational expenses for the local producers which includes the increased cost for the chicken feed. These issues seemingly were the main reasons for the disgruntled poultry farmers and they were and still are seeking to justify price increase for locally produced eggs.
The Government also has its concerns and these are in relation to local production versus the demands, ascertaining information pertaining to the local egg production, sanitation and other good practices. Several attempts were made to put this situation to rest however feasible solutions are yet to be achieved.
The Veterinary and Livestock Division, hosted an egg pricing consultation for poultry famers at the Multi Purpose Exhibition Centre with the expectations of last week’s meeting to have at least fifty percent of the registered poultry farmers in attendance (especially the small farmers) and that after the training most if not all the farmers would view their enterprise as a business and not as a hobby. Additionally, the main purpose of the seminar was to demonstrate the computation of the actual cost of production and showing the comparison of cost for small and large scales production. Sadly, there was only Four producers in attendance.
Dr. Chere Kellman indicated that the absence of the smaller farmers was unfortunate because they stood to benefit more than the larger scale farmers as techniques and information to assist them particularly to improve their output with cost efficiency were disseminated.
The question is, should the Ministry of Agriculture and Dr. Kellman continue facilitating these seminars? Inquiring minds want to know.