Business Desk :
The country’s poultry industry has massive potential, however, the gradually increasing production cost is posing a challenge to this sector.
One of the major underlying reasons is the rise in the cost of the raw materials that go into poultry production, poultry feed being one of them.
Over the past few years, in addition to the increase in the price of corn and soy, two major ingredients of poultry feed, the increase in fuel prices has also catered to the increase of poultry feed production cost.
The Netherlands, one of the prominent countries with advanced agricultural practices, has developed energy-efficient feed mills as per scientific systems by using less costly and energy-saving methods to reduce the overall production cost.
Speakers highlighted this while addressing a discussion titled ‘PoultryTechBangladesh hosts Feed Milling Workshop’ at a hotel at Gulshan in the capital recently.
Under the public-private partnership, PoultryTechBangladesh, Netherlands-based consultant firm Larive International, along with their co-implementor, LightCastle Partners jointly organized the event.
Van Aarsen, one of the consortium members of the PoultryTechBangladesh project and developer, manufacturer and supplier of state-of-the-art machines and complete feed mill and premix plant solutions, mainly conducted the session.
On behalf of Van Aarsen International BV, Roger Ubags, area sales manager for South East Asia, presented a keynote paper titled ‘Energy Capacity at Feed Mill’ at the discussion.
In the keynote, it was told that Van Aarsen has been working since 1949 to make a modern animal feed processing and manufacturing feed mill for providing quality and safe foods for poultry birds. There are 40 such feed mills in the world at the moment. Energy saving is being done in those mills by using modern scientific methods. It would be possible to ensure the supply of poultry feeds at less cost if such a method is used on a large scale in Bangladesh.
Dr Rashed Mahmud, research manager of One Health Poultry Hub-Bangladesh, presented another paper.
Citing a survey report on behalf of The One Health Poultry Hub, it was told that it would play a significant role in reducing diseases among people and animals if production and marketing were done in safe and more sustainable manners.
The discussants mentioned several challenges in the poultry industry. These are: rise in the price of poultry feeds recently, instability in prices of chicken and eggs, trouble in getting bank loans for marginal farmers, absence of incentives during a crisis, and imposing more customs duty on the import of raw materials.
Moreover, they mentioned the sector has provided employment facilities for a large number of people, including women, in Bangladesh’s rural areas. Hence, they called upon the government to take steps including giving special incentives for the sake of saving the sector.
Haruni Osman, senior policy advisor, Food and Nutrition Security at Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh, Sara van Hoeve, first secretary at Netherlands Embassy in Bangladesh, Matthias Brienen, director of Larive International, Zahedul Amin, director of LightCastle Partners, were present during the session.
