Government’s attempt to revive poultry industry struggles to deliver on key promises

For years, Moses Ottipeseku, 58, built his poultry business bird by bird in Sege in the Greater Accra Region. At its peak, the medium-scale farm sustained his family and employed several workers. Then COVID-19 hit. Feed costs soared, demand fell, and debt mounted, forcing him to shut the farm down.

But he never gave up. So, when the National Democratic Congress, then in opposition, promised in its 2024 manifesto to “revamp the collapsing poultry industry,” he saw a second chance.

The promise grew more detailed once the party took office. Under the Feed Ghana Programme, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture unveiled a Poultry Industry Revitalization Programme to reduce importation and create jobs with three components: support for large commercial farms, help for small and medium-scale producers like Mr Ottipeseku, and a backyard initiative known as ‘Nkoko Nkitinkiti’.

The policy promised to support 50 anchor commercial farmers by 2025, each producing 80,000 birds, with financing and bulk supplies of feed and vaccines. It also promised small- to medium-scale farmers day-old chicks, drugs, vaccines, housing credit, and cooperative processing facilities.

None of this has happened, stakeholders say.

The President of the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers, George Dassah, told The Fourth Estate that only the backyard scheme has reached some farmers so far. The other two components have missed their own timelines.

The Association has written to the Ministry four times seeking a meeting to discuss the delay, but no meeting has been held.

The Ada East Agriculture Directorate confirmed the pattern from the district level. Nothing had reached small, medium or commercial farmers there.

Mr Ottipeseku built a medium-scale operation before the pandemic. He and other farmers in the commercial industry said they are exactly the kind of farmers that have the capacity to help Ghana reduce her poultry import bill, which currently stands at $300 million annually.

Food Sovereignty Ghana, an NGO advocating for the country’s food security, is more worried. Its spokesman, Edwin Baffour, said neglecting the major components of the Poultry Revitalization Programme while distributing small numbers of backyard birds puts the entire import substitution goal at risk.

Reaching self-sufficiency, he said, was never going to happen through backyard chicks alone.

Beneficiaries under the backyard initiative, officials and industry leaders say, even that has been poorly executed. The policy promised to support backyard poultry farmers with dual-purpose birds (that both lay eggs and provide meat), feed, cages and vaccines. Farmers say they got only meat birds and inadequate feed, no cages and vaccines.

In Ada East, an NDC branch secretary was handed 30 chicks to share among nine executives with only half a bag of feed, which got finished in two days. He spent his own money on feed for months and eventually ended up consuming the birds with the other executives.

Elsewhere in the same area, another beneficiary, a branch chairman, watched his birds die in the heat. “We didn’t have the right place to keep them,” he said.

In Asante Akim North, farmer Emmanuel Addo registered through the district office. He says the birds went instead to ruling party loyalists.

In Ada West, Presiding Member Lawrence Katey Nunekpeku received 50 birds. Sold at market rate, his broilers could have earned a real profit. But there was no buyer when they matured.

“I thought government would connect us to schools and the Buffer Stock Company,” he said.

In Keta, oversubscription cut allocations from 50 birds per group to five and ten. A farmer in Sissala East said his district got nothing at all despite the area being a hub for poultry feed with little need for government subsidy.

Ministry’s response

Minister of Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, disputed claims that commercial and small- to medium-scale farmers have been abandoned.

“We have not jettisoned, abandoned, or left the small or commercial farmers behind,” he said, calling the backyard scheme merely the first step in a sequence, adding that the other components of the Poultry Revitalization Programme will be implemented soon.

He said feed and vaccines are never optional and the Ministry responds to any shortfall. He said the emphasis on broiler distribution is a deliberate strategy even though that was not what the government promised in the policy document. He described the lack of market as a glut and blamed it on the policy’s success. A large plant under construction in Bechem should absorb the oversupply once commissioned this year, he said.

Records show Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson released GHS200 million ($17. 4 million) in February to buy chicks, feed and vaccines. Mr. Opoku would not say how much has been spent. He, however, confirmed eleven regions have benefited, with each district receiving 10,000 birds under the backyard scheme alone.