Feed, forage crisis sends livestock farmers scrambling

A severe feed and forage crisis is gripping the livestock industry as a rampant wave of pasture fires ravages the landscape, forcing farmers into a desperate scramble for resources and threatening to set the island’s sheep industry back by decades, Barbados TODAY has learned. 

​The traditional dry season has taken a destructive turn, transforming vital grazing lands into barren expanses. Farmers are reporting that the typical brown hues of the dry spell have been replaced by scorched earth, particularly in farming strongholds like St John.

​”There’s no grass, and if you look around, everything’s being burnt,” said president of the Barbados Sheep Farmers Inc. Rommel Parris, describing the grim reality on the ground. 

“Because of the fires, you’re going to lose a lot of pasture lands and everybody is going to be scrambling for grass. There has to be a shortage.”

​The acute scarcity has triggered an immediate spike in the cost of feed. The price of large, round hay bales has doubled in recent weeks, placing an immense financial burden on producers who are already struggling to keep their animals fed.

​”I knew a bale before was like $100, and now I am told that people are selling the big round bales at $200,” Parris said, adding that the crisis goes beyond typical seasonal droughts. “It’s not just the dry period. It’s because of pasture fires. If you drive through St John, it’s not even brown, it’s black. Most of the stuff is black.”

​The shortage has severely strained supply chains. Even established emergency reserves and institutional suppliers have run dry. Major hay producers, who traditionally support the farming community during low-yield months, are turning buyers away.

​”I was in a meeting this week with [hay-maker] MacDonald Stevenson, who normally has a whole thing that he can sell to people at this time of year. He told me he can’t sell any,” Parris revealed. “A lot of farmers used to depend on the Central Agricultural Station at the Pine to get hay from them, and they haven’t had any in a few weeks.”

​To survive, some dairy and livestock farmers are relying on pre-harvested “hay banks” or utilising sawgrass, while others are exploring alternative feeds like silage to keep their herds alive.

​The prolonged feed deficit is driving many farmers to a heartbreaking breaking point: prematurely culling or selling off their livestock because they can no longer afford or find sustenance.

​An unusual surge of livestock listings on social media marketplaces highlights the mounting desperation within the community.

​”If you look at any of the Facebook pages, you will see an increase in people selling sheep,” Parris observed. “People that I would never expect to sell  from their flocks are forced to reduce numbers. You prefer to let go of some stock in the middle of the crisis than let the animals suffer.”

​This forced reduction in flock sizes comes at a precarious time. Industry figures have long warned that the national sheep population is critically low. This ongoing liquidation of breeding stock threatens to completely derail years of population recovery initiatives.

​Industry experts fear the consequences of the current sell-off will reverberate for a generation if high-value breeding animals continue to be sent to the slaughterhouse.

​”We don’t really know the exact numbers of sheep on the island, but it’s going to hurt tremendously,” Parris warned. “If people are selling off sheep to be slaughtered, it’s going to put us back another two or three years. If we were already 20 years behind, this will make us 25 years behind again.”

 

(RR)