Farmers rue protracted animal feed shortage
Published:Thursday | December 29, 2022 | 1:36 AMLeon Jackson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The protracted shortage of animal feed in several sections of the island led to chaos in the Trelawny capital on Wednesday as news swirled that a trailer loaded with pig and chicken feed was headed to a store.
Desperate farmers clamoured to be sold the feed before it could be unloaded and placed in the storeroom.
The owner of the store was forced to close his shutters as the desperation boiled over.
An employee later requested that the customers queue to purchase the sought-after feed.
Arlene, a chicken farmer from Sherwood Content in the parish, told The Gleaner that she had been losing some of her livestock as a result of the crisis.
“It is going one week now, and my chickens are dying,” she said. “They have started attacking each other, resulting in deaths. I am losing most of the 130 chickens I had planning for Christmas sale.”
Veronica, another farmer who rears chickens and pigs, was also seeking feed to purchase.
“God help us. Mi can give the pigs drop breadfruit, coco head, but nothing for the chicken them. Mi nuh have it already and now come dis ya disaster,” she lamented.
Checks by The Gleaner at several stores in Duncans, Clark’s Town, and Jackson Town yesterday afternoon also revealed that they were out of stock despite the agriculture ministry saying it was given an assurance that things would have returned to normal last weekend after farmers expressed concern that they would be going into the long holiday period without animal feed.
Speaking on Radio Jamaica’s Beyond The Headlines on Wednesday evening, Jamaica Agricultural Society President Lenworth Fulton said he is expecting things to return to normal shortly.
He said that information he had gathered suggested that the island’s two main feed manufacturers were hit with crises at the same time – one facing mechanical issues and the other raw material supply challenges – resulting in the situation.
Fulton said that production had been ramped up to deal with the shortage and normalcy could return as early at today.