A call has been made for con­sumers to sup­port lo­cal and re­gion­al chick­en pro­duc­ers to im­prove the poul­try sec­tor and de­crease the food im­port bill.

This came from Colm Im­bert, act­ing Prime Min­is­ter, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at Tues­day’s open­ing of the Sev­enth In­ter­na­tion­al Tech­ni­cal Sym­po­sium and Ex­hi­bi­tion host­ed by the Caribbean Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion at Hy­att Re­gency.

Im­bert said the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge fac­ing the poul­try mar­ket is the im­por­ta­tion of cheap, dark, frozen meat from the US and Cana­da.

He said from a lo­cal stand­point, the North Amer­i­can im­ports take away mar­ket share from lo­cal pro­duc­ers who can pro­duce enough of this coun­try’s meat.

“We must thus work to­geth­er to counter this and con­tin­ue to ex­am­ine and up­date our tar­iff bar­ri­ers and trade mech­a­nisms to pro­tect and sup­port our lo­cal poul­try pro­duc­ers,” Im­bert stressed.

He not­ed the poul­try sec­tor con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the na­tion’s GDP and there was an ex­pan­sion in the num­ber of broil­ers dur­ing the first two quar­ters of fis­cal 2023 when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in fis­cal 2022.

“The in­crease was at­trib­uted to an in­crease in de­mand for chick­en from the fast-food in­dus­try as well as the grow­ing trend by gro­cery chains to of­fer pre-cooked and ready-to-eat chick­en to its cus­tomers. The sec­tor al­so plays a cru­cial role in em­ploy­ment, di­rect­ly sup­port­ing tens of thou­sands of re­gion­al jobs.

“The con­tin­ued growth and de­vel­op­ment of the poul­try in­dus­try is im­per­a­tive not on­ly to meet the in­creas­ing de­mand for pro­tein as our pop­u­la­tions grow but al­so to en­sure that this growth is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able and eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able,” Im­bert said.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Fazal Karim, who al­so spoke, said con­sid­er­ing glob­al eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions, there is a need to strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty and the poul­try sec­tor plays a cru­cial role.

“By in­creas­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion, im­prov­ing feed ef­fi­cien­cy, and re­duc­ing re­liance on im­ports, we are tak­ing sig­nif­i­cant strides to­wards self-suf­fi­cien­cy,” he em­pha­sised.

Of­fer­ing a re­gion­al per­spec­tive, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, of Eco­nom­ic In­te­gra­tion, In­no­va­tion and De­vel­op­ment, at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at Joseph Cox said sus­tain­able poul­try pro­duc­tion is key to at­tain­ing Cari­com’s Vi­sion 25 by 2025. Speak­ing vir­tu­al­ly, Cox point­ed out that one of the fore­most goals of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture is to en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty and im­proved nu­tri­tion for all and stat­ed there is a con­cen­trat­ed ef­fort on the poul­try val­ue chain to re­duce the re­gion’s food im­port bill by 25 per cent by next year.

“The ap­proach, which must be pur­sued for the poul­try in­dus­try, fo­cus­es on pro­mot­ing in­creased pro­duc­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through in­vest­ment, digi­ti­sa­tion, and adap­ta­tion of new tech­nolo­gies. These in­vest­ments must en­cour­age in­ter­ven­tions, which seek to amal­ga­mate the ef­forts of the Mem­ber States and the pri­vate sec­tor,” Cox ex­plained.

He list­ed corn and soya pro­duc­tion in Be­lize and Guyana, and the of­fer­ing of land for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in Suri­name sup­port­ed by an en­vi­ron­ment that will al­low for the move­ment of agri­cul­tur­al work­ers through­out the Re­gion, as ex­am­ples of col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment

Ear­li­er in the open­ing ses­sion, CPA pres­i­dent Hamant Ma­habir said cre­at­ing a se­cure poul­try sec­tor in the Caribbean is the cor­ner­stone of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“We must adopt strate­gies,” he said. “The abil­i­ty to adapt and thrive is para­mount. We are com­mit­ted to en­hanc­ing pro­duc­tion.”

The CPA was formed in 1999 by a col­lec­tive of poul­try pro­duc­ers who faced com­mon chal­lenges in their in­dus­try. As a re­gion­al ad­vo­ca­cy group, the CPA’s fo­cus on busi­ness growth and in­sights sup­ports the con­tin­ued de­sire for self-suf­fi­cien­cy, re­silience, and pros­per­i­ty. This year, the theme of the CPA con­fer­ence is “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Re­silience in the Caribbean Poul­try Sec­tor”.