We’re out!

The price of animal feed is set to go up by as much as 21 per cent from next Monday, with the island’s lead manufacturer of poultry and livestock feed saying it can no longer stick to its agreement to hold off increases until next January.

The increase was reportedly communicated to the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) by Pinnacle Feeds which stated that the price compact that the private sector signed with the government in July this year has had a significant impact on the company’s financial performance and it was impossible to delay the hike.

The price increases will range from six to 21 per cent.

Under the compact, the feed supplier had committed to not increasing animal feed prices for the next six months, unless an extraordinary event occurred.

However, in correspondence to the BAS, it said it had no choice but to break from the compact at this time, given its massive reduction in profits and capital.

The company said breaking the agreement “will enable the company to partially offset the erosion of capital since the price compact took effect”.

Efforts to get a comment from Pinnacle Feeds were unsuccessful but the company is scheduled to have a meeting with farmers and other stakeholders on Friday to discuss the pending increase.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the BAS James Paul told Barbados TODAY the announced increase comes as no surprise to the association which has been monitoring the sector closely during the course of the year, given the high costs of fuel, electricity, and other raw materials farmers faced.

But he said the farmers were not in a position to absorb any more price hikes which directly affected their business.

“It’s a challenging environment in which costs are actually going up… It’s a difficult situation. I think that, in a sense, farmers clearly cannot absorb that increase, they will have to pass it on to consumers. But the truth is really that the farming sector as a whole is [finding it] very difficult because of the cost increases that we are seeing,” Paul said.

“If you are serious about food security, what therefore are we to do to try to ensure that we can keep our costs down to the person operating in the sector?”

Paul stressed that the increased cost to the consumer was not the only concern as the situation could also affect employment in the sector.

“If the prices for which we produce our products cannot feed the people in the industry, it means that people will lose jobs . . . so this is more than just that the price is going up, it’s that the whole sector has a challenge that needs to be dealt with, and it’s a question really [of] what are the policies that we are going to put in place to try to ensure that we can continue to keep our costs down,” the BAS boss said.

shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb