Decision soon on feed price hikes

Government will soon be making a crucial decision that will determine whether the price of locally produced livestock and poultry feed will go up, says Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir.

He told Barbados TODAY that, as requested, the island’s sole manufacturer of livestock and poultry feed, Pinnacle Feeds, had submitted important documents to the ministry which would enable officials to do a thorough analysis of its challenges and determine if a price hike was absolutely justified.

“We got the information we wanted from Pinnacle. The information altogether is not everything that I wanted but it was enough for us to make a decision. We are satisfied that Pinnacle and the ministry agreed for us to do further numbers so that we can disaggregate a number of the manufacturing processes that take place at Pinnacle using the same inputs.

“We have agreed on that, in principle. All it takes now is for us to make sure that this price support continues as agreed and that the farmers are able to get access to feed at the price that was held,” he said.

In 2021, Government set aside $4 million in price support for poultry and livestock farmers when Pinnacle Feeds indicated that due to the skyrocketing costs of inputs, it was going to increase its prices by 19 and 26 per cent.

Back then, the Government also negotiated with the manufacturer to drop its profit margin to 11 per cent.

Last October, Pinnacle Feeds wrote to the Barbados Agricultural Society informing the organisation of its plan to increase prices by as much as 21 per cent because of the continued rising costs of grain. However, the Government injected a $2 million subsidy that took effect from that month and ends next month.

Back then, Weir had said that he was not in favour of providing subsidies.

Asked if the Government would consider another $2 million subsidy going forward, the Agriculture Minister told Barbados TODAY: “I’m not always convinced that you should rush head-on and determine what the future will be without doing the numbers and not without doing a thorough investigation. So that is not something I can speak to until we have completed the assessment, where we disaggregate the production processes as it relates to the inputs so that we determine what the true impact really is on feed production.” (SZB)