The Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Security in Edo, Stephen Idehenre, says the state government has empowered at least 5,000 poultry farmers to produce 10,000 birds daily.

Mr Idehenre said this during an interactive session with journalists in Benin on Wednesday.

He said the government was collaborating with a processing company to process the 10,000 birds in Iguoriakhi and Iguobazuwa, Ovia South West Local Government Area.

“The state government, in partnership with Hifer company, will support the processor to process 10,000 birds daily.

“To be able to meet the supply of these 10,000 birds daily, we have aggregated 5,000 smallholder poultry farmers to produce birds,” he said.

The commissioner said farmers were empowered with 500 day-old chicks as startups.

“They will produce 10,000 birds daily that will be sold within and outside Edo,” he stated.

The commissioner said for the egg value chain, the state government had also partnered egg powderisation company to offtake the eggs.

“It means that every poultry farmer producing eggs has a ready market to offtake all their eggs.

“We found out that their major problem has to do with offtake,” he said.

Mr Idehenre further said the companies would have commercial operations in the first quarter of 2023 “because the agreement has been signed and land preparation completed”.

He expressed optimism that with the initiative, the state would become the number one in egg powder production soon.

“Side by side, we are collaborating with another company to produce eggs in large quantities so that we do not create scarcity in the state when the company starts to offtake most of the eggs.

“We gave them 10 hectares of land for this purpose in the Iguoriakhi,” Mr Idehenre said.

(NAN)