No chicken feed

For several years now, the chicken growers have been among our regular resource persons in Business & Leisure, the television show.

Maybe because chickens are an important component of a consumer’s daily menu, tracking the price of this regular commodity has become some sort of a mission for us. Through the years, we have become a venue for many such sectors – the hog/chicken/grain/dairy/coffee sectors have availed of our show or even this column to give the public regular updates on developments in their particular sectors or perhaps to vent their misgivings on unresolved issues. To be sure, there are always two or even three sides to an issue, so we always try to give equal space to the “other side”.

An example of this concerns the controversy between the local hog raisers and the pork importers who felt they were being discriminated against with the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) recent rulings on the handling of frozen meat sold in public markets.

In pursuit of fair journalism and to afford consumers an accurate and composite picture, we aired extensive interviews with both the local pork producers as well as the importers. For good measure, we gave space to the cold storage chains association as well since they found themselves entangled in the controversial issue, and did not fail to include the government’s side through the pertinent agency involved.

Back to the local chicken growers. From a recent news item we read, we learned that our chicken farmers now have resorted again to early culling. What we like about interviews with sectors such as this is the wealth of information and knowledge we gain from the resource persons we interview.

For the chicken sector, we again had the pleasure of sitting down with Mr. Gregorio San Diego, president of UMBRA (United Broilers and Raisers Association), the umbrella organization of our chicken growers in the country. Mr. San Diego is actually a “suki”, one of the many we have on the show who are generous with their time in sharing with our viewers/readers.

In the broiler sector, they have the grandparents’ stock (owned only by the big corporations like San Miguel, etc.) and the parents’ stock which our small and medium businessmen have and which become broilers and are marketed when they are between 30 to 35 days old. The backyard raisers purchase the one day-old chicks of the breeder stock.

Early culling is resorted to when there is an over-supply of day-old chicks in the market. When this happens, these one day-old chicks or DOC sometimes sell for as low as P8.00/head. With a production cost of about P16 to P18/head, the farmers cannot afford to sell them for so much less, in this case at half the production cost, so they resort to early culling. Sometimes, they delay bringing the breeders to the hatchery, and at times they store the eggs in the egg room.

The breeders are usually sold at 66 weeks, but with early culling, this period is cut down to 62 weeks. With this option, they are able to reduce the hatching eggs and avoid flooding the market with DOC. As the law on supply and demand dictates, when you lessen the broilers that you produce, the retail price in the market goes up. Too, if you cut the production of day-old chicks early on, you lessen your production cost which, as the chicken growers lament, lately has gone up. The proliferation of day-old chicks, of course is favorable to backyard growers.

One of the biggest production costs is the feeds. With the recent drought in the United States, soybean mill prices have gone up. This makes up for 22 percent (in volume) of chicken feed and locally costs between P21 to P30/kilo which we import from the US and Argentina. Local corn, unfortunately, is also more pricey now, with good quality corn selling for P14.50/kilo. Every year, the country experiences a corn shortage such that we cannot supply our own domestic requirements. Corn, thus, is substituted by the more expensive wheat which we also import. This one doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If there is a ready market for corn as feeds, and the chicken growers will have to shell out much more to import wheat to substitute for local corn, why isn’t someone providing the necessary link which will benefit both the corn farmer and the chicken grower?

Then too there is the perennial problem of unregulated retail prices. Time and again, the chicken growers lament that on so many occasions, almost regularly even, their farmgate prices go down substantially because chicken prices are market-dictated. Even with very low farmgate prices, retail prices in wet markets and supermarkets do not reflect the drop in prices. This commodity is kept at a steady price, but when the farmgate prices go up, the traders or middle men are sure to jack up their prices and blame the chicken farmers for the spike. When will this ever be addressed?

And lastly, the age-old problem of smuggling is still a perennial gripe among the chicken growers. According to the UMBRA official, “smuggling is not only being done in the ports here…also in PEZA, Subic, Clark and in customs bonded warehouses….Last year, there was a record 127 million plus kilos of chicken smuggled. In July this year, four million more over last year was smuggled…And basis ng figures na ito yung legal ng BAI or Bureau of Animal Industry.”  He added that unless they see some apprehensions, they feel that there are still no positive developments as far as chicken smuggling is concerned.

The Bureau of Animal Industry is the agency tasked to issue permits for importation of chicken. With a new director now sitting at the BAI, they hope to see reforms soon because the industry has suffered so much, according to UMBRA. The problem is, with the fast turnover of officials in the government, they are hard put to initiate reforms. The chicken industry almost collapsed in 2000, but UMBRA says that with the timely intervention of then agriculture secretary (now Senator) Angara who reacted promptly to lend succor, the country’s chicken industry survived the crisis. Now they are asking the Department of Agriculture, under whose wings they seek support, to heed their pleas for an even playing field.

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino.

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