by Suresh Perera

With import restrictions pushing up poultry feed prices to an all-time high, a grave shortage of chicken and eggs is anticipated in the short term as small and medium scale producers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep pace with soaring production costs, a senior industry official warned.

A 50% drop in production has been projected within a few months as moderate farms are now unable to sustain their businesses and will eventually close down, says Ajith Gunasekara, president of the All Island Poultry Association.

“The reverberations will be felt in December when the demand balloons during Christmas”, he predicted.

He said that Sri Lanka produces only half of the poultry industry’s demand for maize, the main ingedient of poultry feed.

With consignments from India and Ukraine no longer coming due to import restrictions, the disruption in supplies has seen a spike in prices for the local produce.

A kilogram of maize has climbed to anything between Rs. 90-95 in the marketplace due to the non-availability of imports at competitive pricing, he said. “This will sound the death knell to small-time poultry farms”.

In any poultry farm, feed absorbs 70% of the operational cost, Gunasekara stressed. “Apart from maize, producers also have to procure soya, corn and vitamins at substantial cost for the feed combination”.

The prevailing Covid-19 related travel restrictions have also aggravated the crisis the poultry industry is grappling with as the continued closure of wholesale distribution points have crippled supplies to the retail chain, he complained.

This means the retail trade has no access to the produce to supply traders and mobile vendors who have been declared essential services to service consumers, he said.

There are a multitude of ‘meat shops’ run by poultry producers island-wide, but they have no stocks as wholesalers, who collect chicken from farms, have not been authorized to operate during the travel restrictions, he protested.

Those in the chicken processing business are also facing immense hardships as they have not been permitted to operate, he explained. “Overall, the losses suffered by the industry will be enormous”.

Retailers cannot be expected to collect stocks from farms in the provinces even if they are able to make it as they don’t have either freezer trucks or necessary storage facilities, Gunasekara pointed out. “Moreover, visits to farms have been restricted due to Covid-19 preventive measures”.

“We have asked the government to intervene in the matter as the industry is in deep trouble with skyrocketing poultry feed prices pinning down producers on the one hand and accumulating stocks in storage facilities on the other”, he noted.

He said that traders have also been dealt a big financial blow with stocks of chicken in their deep freezers no longer fit for consumption.

The farm gate price is Rs. 430 per kilogram of chicken (whole bird), but despite a MRP (Maximum Retail Price) of Rs. 550 in terms of the price control mechanism, it is being sold for Rs. 700 per kilo these days due to procurement difficulties, he continued.

The reluctance of people to eat fish due to contamination fears following the X-Press Pearl disaster has also triggered a bigger demand for chicken. Unlike fish, cooked chicken can be refrigerated and eaten for about a week by an average family, Gunasekara elaborated.

He said the annual demand for chicken is between 15,000 to 18,000 metric tons. There’s an annual surge of up to 18,000MT during the April-December festive season.

The production of eggs ranges from 700,000 to 800,000 per day. Purchased at a farm gate price of Rs. 12-14 each, retailers at present sell each for Rs. 20.

“We were prepared for a two-week lockdown, but with the continued closure, the situation is getting more desperate by the day”, he said.