No ease yet in poultry prices

Barbadians may have to wait just a little bit longer for a reduction in the price of poultry, says chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS) James Paul.

He explained this was due to the fact that by the time Government and its main feed supplier Pinnacle Feeds reached an agreement to lower the price of feed earlier this month some farmers had already purchased feed at the higher cost.

He said this meant the price of meat would be sold to reflect those increased costs.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Indar Weir announced on September 7 that there would be an eight per cent reduction in the price of livestock feed to farmers for at least the next 90 days.

The deal meant that the price of livestock feed sold to farmers would decrease from 19 per cent to 11 per cent.

Pinnacle Feeds had served notice of its plans to increase the price of animal feeds by 26 per cent from August 1.

The company had blamed a sustained increase in the price of corn on the world market from $3.50 per bushel to as much as $7 as the main reason for the hike.

“Remember too that it was also clear that farmers were also paying the high price for feed for a number of weeks, so the challenge is timing in trying to determine how soon they could actually reduce the price,” Paul told Barbados TODAY in an interview.

“I know that some persons had a particular timeline in which to align with, which is about two weeks or so, but I can’t say because I have not monitored what is happening out there. Individual producers or processors sell their products differently so it all depends.

“But they will have to wait a few weeks before they see an adjustment because farmers would have already been buying feed at the increased price for a number of weeks until the matter got resolved. I think there will be an adjustment once it goes through the system,” he added.

However, the CEO said it was highly unlikely those prices would return to “normal” as farmers were still paying slightly more for feed.

“Some probably would have been able to hold the prices or reduce them, but not back to previous levels because the actual reduction in price was not what it originally was, but certainly there would be a reduction in some cases,” Paul said. (RB)