TOBA TEK SINGH: A good number of poultry farmers are facing a crunch time and forced to wind up their business after selling their existing stocks of birds at throwaway prices.

A survey conducted by this correspondent showed that the main cause of recent losses was ‘extraordinary’ production of the broiler bird.

Asghar Ali Kamboh, a farmer of Chak 299-GB, said the poultry farmers were selling the product at Rs65 per kg though it cost Rs101 which means huge loss. He said the meat sellers should sell the chicken at Rs100 per kg but they were charging between Rs130 and 145.

A Pirmahal poultry farmer, Rana Muhammad Ashraf, explained: “We purchase one-day-old chick at Rs20 and during its growth in 55 to 60 days (a time it must be sold out), it should at least fetch Rs110 after calculation of expenses including medicines, vaccination, feed, fuel, transportation, maintenance of farm and salary of staff.”

He said many birds died during the process and the ultimate loser was the farmer.

Farzand Ali of Kamalia said a majority of the farmers had obtained loans from banks for their business but the recent losses had rendered them unable to return the loans so the government should direct the banks to defer the recovery of loans for one year and waive the markup.

He said Kamalia was one of the biggest poultry producing areas of the country and the government should arrange interest-free loans for the farmers.

A poultry commission agent, Shabbir Ahmad, said there would be shortage of chicken meat in the days to come as in the last few weeks more than 40pc of the poultry farmers had closed their farms due to continuous losses. He said the price of chicken meat remained very low due to oversupply of birds in the market.

He suggested that the minimum and maximum price of chicken meat should be fixed by the government instead of the present pricing system which was based on fixation of rates every day on the basis of demand and supply.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2015

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