In a bid to ramp up production and meet the growing demands of birds, the Edo State government said it has empowered about 5,000 poultry smallholder farmers to produce 10,000 birds on a daily basis.
Stephen Idehenre, commissioner for agriculture and food security, disclosed to journalists in Benin City that, for the plan to come to fruition, the state government has partnered with a company that would support in processing the 10,000 birds in Iguoriakhi and Iguobazuwa in Ovia South West local government area of Edo State.
“To be able to meet with the supply of these 10,000 birds daily, we have aggregated 5,000 smallholder poultry farmers to produce birds and we are empowering them with 500 day-old chicks as start-ups.
“They will produce 10,000 birds daily that will be sold within and outside Edo State. The state government in partnership with a processing company would support the processors to process 10,000 birds daily,” Idehenre said.
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Speaking on egg value chain, Idehenre said he envisaged Edo becoming the first in egg powder production owing to the recent collaboration with a egg powder factory that will offtake the eggs from farmers.
“We found out that their major problem is offtake. So, instead of them to be hawking the eggs in the market and on the streets, the state government has partnered with a egg powderization company to offtake the eggs from the famers. This means that every poultry farmer producing eggs has a ready market to offtake all their eggs.
“Side by side, we have also partnered with another company to produce eggs in large quantities so that we do not create scarcity of eggs in the state by the time the company start to offtake most of the eggs.
“We gave them 10 hectares of land for this purpose in Iguoriakhi. The eggs will be off-taking by the egg powder factory. So, in essence, we are tackling the issue of off-take to increase production,” he added.
