Description

Until the late 1970’s when hydrocarbon was discovered in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, present day Bayelsa state, Agriculture remained the mainstay of the economy contributing over 90% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country as against the less than 40% it now contributes to the GDP of Nigeria with crop production accounting for an estimated 85%, livestock 10% and the balance made up by fisheries and forestry.

Though over 70% of Nigeria’s 923,768 square kilometres land mass is arable and suitable for Agricultural, the nation is a net importer of food products.

In an attempt to tackle the problems facing the Agricultural Sector in Nigeria, Government put in place the National Agricultural Policy, which was jointly formulated by the national stakeholders and International Development Partners and approved by the Federal Government in 2002. Specifically, the National Agricultural Policy assigns supportive roles to the government, while investments in the sector are left to the private sector initiative and in order to encourage investment in the poultry sub-sector, Government approved ban on the importation frozen poultry products and gave other incentives to stimulate investment.

Nigeria, with a population of about 165 million is grossly underprovided with the essential food component, which is protein. For example, data from the FOS, CBN, and FAO indicate that from cattle, less than 2kg of beef is available to an average Nigerian per year and just mere 4kg of eggs per annum is available to each Nigerian.

In fact, milk production has been nose diving or at best has remained constant since 1994.This scenario is compounded more so when the volume of egg supply is very low, being 10.56g per person per day as compared with the usual recommendation that an egg should be consumed by an adult per day. This recommendation would imply a crate of 30 eggs per month. This story also holds for other meat products including, chicken.

The report examines the feasibility of establishing a poultry farm starting 18 months old pullet producing table eggs and layers.

Nigeria, with a population of about 165 million is grossly underprovided with the essential food component, which is protein. For example, data from the FOS, CBN, and FAO indicate that from cattle, less than 2kg of beef is available to an average Nigerian per year and just mere 4kg of eggs per annum is available to each Nigerian. In fact, milk production has been nose diving or at best has remained constant since 1994.

This scenario is compounded more so when the volume of egg supply is very low, being 10.56g per person per day as compared with the usual recommendation that an egg should be consumed by an adult per day. This recommendation would imply a crate of 30 eggs per month. This story also holds for other meat products including, chicken.

To ameliorate this problem of low-level of protein intake, there is the need for concerted effort, among the various stakeholders to bring about the massive production of protein based food items at competitive costs so that they would be affordable to the general masses. Aside from the other necessary economic reforms, massive investment poultry farming is one way of resolving the problem.