Kuwait’s poultry farmers struggle with production costs

The board chairman of Kuwait’s Al-Wuhaib poultry company, Hamid Al-Wuhaib, said Kuwaiti poultry farm owners are suffering from the problems and challenges that come with the world-wide increase in production costs.

Owners are often forced to borrow from banks, he said, adding that the industry have asked the pertinent officials at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR), to pay attention to their problems and concerns and try to solve them, or at least to treat them equally with local farms, but to no avail.

Al-Wuhaib complained that despite the place of poultry in the country’s food security net, and the relatively large amount of eggs they provide to the local market, official response has been slack and negligent.

Feed strangling production

Meanwhile, Abdelaziz Al-Sarraf, chairman of Al-Mubarakiya poultry company, which produces 700 cartons of eggs daily said poultry farms are suffering because of the lack of soya feed for birds. He said it must be imported, especially from India, where prices have been increasing. He said egg production costs multiplied by 300% during the past three years all over the world, including feed, medicine, cardboard and plastic etc. When local farms wanted to raise the price of eggs in order to compensate their increased costs, co-operatives launched a campaign against them and accused them of seeking high profits at the expense of consumers, Al-Sarraf said.

Al-Sarraf, when asked if it was realistic to reject raising the price of eggs by any percentage, without presenting realistic solutions or subsidising producing farms which are now unable to bear the burden of production costs. Al-Sarraf replied that they should have worked on subsidising local poultry farms without middle men, cancelled profit margins and not have made demands for eggs free of charge.

Poultry farming expert Mohammad Al-Furaih commented that Kuwait’s poultry and egg production industry should be supported with, for a start, monitoring feed prices, adjusting eggs sale price in cooperatives based on feed costs, while across the board co-operation between commerce and the industry ministry, as well as PAAFR, to supply poultry feed at suitable prices to producing farms.