Bangladesh Poultry Association, an organisation of egg producers, has demanded the formation of a "poultry board" to root out syndicates in the poultry sector.

The association's president, Sumon Howlader, made the demand at a press conference at 11am on Sunday (18 September), held to protest against uncontrolled rises in poultry feed and chick prices and farmers not getting fair prices for their eggs and chickens.

He said a poultry board should be formed and the government should set separate prices for eggs and chickens at farm and consumer level. A national committee should be formed with the livestock, commerce and agriculture ministries and representatives of farmers, feed mills and hatchery owners. That committee would set the prices of chicks and all poultry products every 15 days or one month.

Sumon Howlader alleged that a syndicate took about Tk 325 crore by selling chicks over 45 special days including Eid and Shab-e-Barat. Feed prices, he said, rose 10 times in the past year. From June 2021 to June 2022 the price of a 50 kg bag rose by Tk 1,047, and the price rose by Tk 2.50 a kg between the 7th of last month and the 7th of this month.

"Even if the rise is Tk 2 a kg, feed companies have taken Tk 1,405 crore in profit over this period. In 2009 there were 160,000 poultry farms in the country. Up to 2019 there were 100,000. But about 40,000 farms closed in 2021-22."

He said no farmer sets the market price. Local wholesalers set it based on demand, following the Dhaka market, without regard to the cost of producing eggs and broilers.

"With some corporate companies in Bangladesh and some foreign multinational companies entering commercial farming, the market has passed into their hands, because about 40 per cent of total production is theirs. They want small and marginal farmers to drop out so that full control of the market comes to them."

He said that where eggs cost consumers Tk 12-13, the producer gets at most Tk 9.50. Wholesalers, middlemen and grocers take up to Tk 2.50-3 per egg along the way.

Sumon Howlader added that corporate companies' cost of producing eggs is lower because their chicks come from their own hatcheries, and they import all feed ingredients in bulk, make feed in their own factories and supply it to their commercial farms. This creates a large gap between the price of their products and those of marginal farmers.

He said marginal farmers are helpless before these corporate companies; when the companies raise chick and feed prices, they all raise them together.

The association's general secretary, Md Elias Khandaker, said chick prices have risen by more than 50 per cent in a year and feed prices by more than 60 per cent. The country's leading companies are responsible for such abnormal price rises, and thousands of farms have closed in the past year because of them.

He also put a six-point demand to the government, including bringing all farmers, small and large, new and old, under insurance.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.