he Ministry of Food and Agriculture, in collaboration with the Ghana National As- sociation of Poultry Farmers through the national livestock strategy policy is to produce 30,000 metric tons (MT) of broiler meat this year.
The production is expected to increase by 60,000MT by the year 2016, with an aim of reducing the countries meat importation burden by 40%.
The spiral effect of increased livestock and poultry production as enshrined in the policy is to help reduce the incidence of poverty among food farmers who are livestock keepers and to boost local capacity in the production, processing and marketing of broiler chicken.
Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture Dr. Alhassan Ahmed Yakubu speaking at the launch of the Ghana broiler re-vitalization project in Accra said the country from 2010-2012, imported approximately 200,000 metric tons of chicken valued at $200 million which is equivalent to 2.6 million chickens per week.
Indicating that Ghana’s poul- try imports have more than qua- drupled since 2002 and increas- ing at a rate of 5% annually.
He observed that last year alone Ghana’s total meat imports rose from 97,719MT in 2012 to 183,949MT registering an increase of 88%, adding that, currently the country consumes an average of 225,000MT of meat annually.
“Interestingly domestic pro- duction constitutes only 30% of our meat production while Poultry imports alone constitute 80% of our total meat imports. Definitely this situation if allowed to continue will spell the doom of the poultry industry in Ghana,” he said.
The minister noted that it is a fact that meat intake in Ghana is one of the lowest in the world with an estimated poultry consumption of 12 eggs and 1.2kg meat per annum while the world average is 154 eggs and 9.7 kg meat respectively.
According to him the impor- tant safeguards in the project is its contractual agreements that have been made between the sponsor and hatcheries, feed millers, farm- ers, processors and marketers who would be off -takers at agreed and negotiated prices.
He said this would increase the supply of meat, animal and dairy products of domestic pro- duction from the current ag- gregate level of 30% to 50% of national requirement by two years to come.
