The island’s main egg producer agreed on Monday to back off from an eight-cent price hike on eggs following direct intervention by Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Indar Weir. The move returns consumer prices to an average of 60 cents per egg until at least after Christmas, the minister and Chickmont Foods Limited’s Operations Manager Trevor Gunby announced on Monday.
Gunby said talks with the minister were “healthy and fruitful”, leading to a commitment to revert the price of eggs to last week’s level.
“Chickmont had some discussions with the minister of agriculture, and we will do our best. Because we are committed to what we do best, and we are committed to keeping prices as low as possible,” he told Barbados TODAY.
Providing further details, Weir said he had persuaded management to suspend the price hike.
“I had a very cordial conversation with very cordial conversation with [Marketing and PR Manager Ethan] DeFreitas. I told him not to increase the price of eggs at this time, and he has agreed with me that he will hold off. Obviously, this is coming at a substantial loss to him, but I made the point that the ministry provides lots of concessions to agriculture, of which he is a beneficiary,” he told Barbados TODAY. “At this time, we needed to give back to the country. So we agreed there won’t be an increase in the price of eggs at this time.”
Both Weir and Gunby assured Barbadians that there would be enough eggs and poultry for Christmas. The minister added that poultry producers are increasing production and that small farmers will be supported to meet growing demand.
Weir said: “If you checked last week, you will see chickens have returned to the supermarket shelves. This week, you will see more brands coming back. At the end of the day, you can’t have one producer producing all; you will have to have all the suppliers producing and meeting their quotas.”
“The poultry producers have committed to increasing their production, and we have to now put in place measures to have small farmers take advantage of the funds that are made available through the [Barbados Agricultural Society] so that they could do the retrofitting of their pens or even build out more,” he added.
Gunby highlighted the challenges of increasing egg production, explaining that it is a time-consuming process, as a chicken only lays an egg every 27 hours.
“They don’t lay every day. So, you can’t increase the production . . . it takes eight, nine months to really get a bird – from ordering the hatching eggs to a mature bird in order to produce eggs,” he said, adding that in December, the demand for eggs doubles because there is a lot more baking, “but you can’t get the chicken to lay double.”
Addressing the increase in the cost of imported eggs, the Chickmont operations manager explained that the price hike had been driven by a significant shortage of eggs in the United States, leading to higher global and local costs.
Gunby disclosed that these imported eggs cost 80 cents each, forcing the company to implement a blended price increase of eight cents per egg.
“You can see the price of eggs on the market as of today; it has skyrocketed,” he said. “They are twice the price they were in June. When you buy eggs from the supermarkets from today, the price varies. And it is unfortunate that we had to buy at this price, but Chickmont Foods’ sole interest is making sure that the country has adequate amounts of eggs. You don’t want the Christmas season to come and there is not enough.”
Gunby lamented that a lack of information sharing among producers may be contributing to some of the challenges in the industry related to production, supply and demand.
“We need to work with all of the other producers and they work with us, and we share information in order to know where the industry is. And that is the whole problem. Without information, all you doing is just guesstimating . . . guessing what the outcome might be, and if you don’t make a good decision, it [has] consequences, you know,” he said.
Minister Weir suggested egg imports will continue because Barbados has not been able to produce adequate supplies to meet demand, though he would like to see the practice end.
He said: “I would like the time to come when it does not; that’s what we are working on. We developed an app between my ministry and the BAS and private stakeholders . . . which is going to help us to track production, track mortality, track hatching eggs, and keep abreast of what is happening to be able to plan more effectively in what is currently happening.”
The minister said while the government cannot control factors such as bird mortality from heat, it could address the nature of pens used by farmers to help ease the impacts.
“The future in all of this is that we are going to have to help small farmers retrofit their pens so that they can have the cooling systems,” said Weir. “We clearly have to support building out more with tunnel pens so that we can have an improvement in the situation.”
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
