A local poultry farmer, Mr Joel Oduware, has called for the improvement of eggs value chain to boost returns for poultry farmers in the country.
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Oduware made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.
The poultry farmer called on the government to invest in the setup of local egg powder companies to boost local egg production and avert glut in the sector.
“We need to increase the value addition of our eggs for poultry farmers to get reasonable returns for their investments.
“To set up an egg powder company locally is capital intensive; you will run into huge foreign exchange in multi millions of Naira. It improving eggs value chain should not be as difficult as this.
“Even at that there is no market for locally processed egg powder because most big confectionary companies and bakeries will rather patronise the foreign egg powder.
“What the government can do for now is to deny the importers of egg powder foreign exchange and ask them to invest in backward integration.
“If they can do this, that will remove egg glut and boost the production of eggs in the country,” Oduware told NAN.
Oduware said that the export of local eggs to neighbouring countries could also help boost the rate of egg production in the country.
“To boost the production of eggs and improve its value chain, we can also export eggs to neighbouring countries as we used to.
“The large scale producers of eggs in the country can look into egg exports to increase their returns and reduce egg glut.
“Eggs in Nigeria is far cheaper than eggs in our neighbouring countries such as Chad, Niger, Mali and Burkina-Faso, because they import eggs into their country and it’s a bit expensive than our locally produced ones.’’
Oduware said that the National Egg Production Programme (NEPPO) initiated during the first tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, is yet to see the light of day.
He revealed that the programme was initiated to improve egg production in the country as well as enhance the value chain of locally produced eggs.
“The idea behind NEPPO was that the eggs that will be produced under the programme will be used for the school feeding programme proposed by the government.
“If the school feeding programme was achieved in all states of the federation, this would have been a good market opportunity for egg production in the country.
“If the programme had taken off, the government would have been able to buy the eggs from the farmers at an agreed price of market value to run the National school feeding programme,” he said.