World Egg Day: ‘Insecurity, Poor Funding Hampering Egg Production’

Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), the umbrella body of poultry famers yesterday lamented that insecurity, lack of financial support and bad rural roads are hampering increased egg production and limiting  outputs.

While climate change and high cost of inputs are other challenges highlighted to be hindering smooth running of poultry production in Nigeria.

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) chapter of the association at an event to mark this year’s World Egg Day in Abuja yesterday called for government intervention and structured loan  specifically to address special needs of farmers.

The chapter chairman, Pious Aminu who was represented by the secretary, Musa Akin, said egg remains important ingredient of nutrition that Nigerians can not afford to neglect.

The day is set apart by the global community to celebrate the power of the egg with this year’s theme, “Eggs for a Better Life’ which celebrates the incredible egg’s power to support  human health outcomes.

He said, “Egg production is one of the vital components of agric sub sector that produce a lot of employment for unemployed youths and women alike and also helps to bridge the gap of protein intake in the country.

The main challenges we’re having is the insecurity that have also led to close down of so many farms, especially in FCT and poultry farmers in FCT also want to use this medium to also appeal to relevant authority to help us fix most of our rural roads, this road network also helps most of our farmer to convey their products conveniently from their farm to the markets”.

“Then of course we cannot also talk about the challenges without mentioning finance which affect almost every farmers in terms of expansion and in terms of setting up their farms and in advance of disease outbreak and of course recently, many farms in FCT were being destroyed by storm wind which we have been looking for a way to reach out to FCT administration to come to the aid of these affected farmers in FCT”, he added.