Akash Sama­roo

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein says he and Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon are work­ing with farm­ers to find a so­lu­tion to the high cost of an­i­mal feed, which has im­pact­ed the cost of eggs.

“At this time, the min­istry is cur­rent­ly en­gag­ing with stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try to ad­dress this mat­ter which has been im­pact­ing sev­er­al farm­ers across the coun­try,” Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Ho­sein said he and Gopee-Scoon spent the af­ter­noon in dis­cus­sions with the Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion.

In Cou­va, the news of an in­crease in an­oth­er ba­sic food item had veg­etable ven­dor Suni­ta Sir­joo won­der­ing if she now needs to make more ad­just­ments to her fam­i­ly’s di­et. De­spite the an­nounced in­crease in the cost of eggs be­ing in the pub­lic do­main for over 24 hours, it was news to Sir­joo.

“What gone up now? Eggs? Well, I will have to stop eat­ing eggs now and turn veg­e­tar­i­an be­cause it’s six of us at home so one meal, some­times I use an en­tire dozen. Is every time you go in the gro­cery you pay­ing more boy and spend­ing a set of mon­ey to leave with just two small bags.”

Less than 10 kilo­me­tres away out­side the Mas­ter Mix com­pound in Point Lisas, egg farmer Den­nis Shawn Ram­s­ingh was equal­ly wor­ried. On Sun­day, Ram­s­ingh’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ta­ble Egg Pro­duc­ers (ATT­TEP) an­nounced a price in­crease due to what they said were sev­er­al fac­tors, chief among them the ris­ing cost of feed. But yes­ter­day, he said a let­ter from Mas­ter Mix, a ma­jor source of an­i­mal feed, said that fur­ther price ad­just­ments could hap­pen as it mon­i­tors the im­passe be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine.

“This is a cat­a­stro­phe wait­ing to hap­pen be­cause when it goes up more, we will have to pass on the cost.”

Ram­s­ingh, who was at the time pur­chas­ing feed from Mas­ter Mix at the new price, said the lat­est six per cent in­crease from Mas­ter Mix will cost him around $12,000 ex­tra a week.

The ATT­TEP es­ti­mates that could lead to a $2 in­crease per dozen for con­sumers.

Egg farmer Joel Mc­Coney said To­bag­o­ni­ans may ac­tu­al­ly pay a bit more.

“We are at a dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to our farm­ers in Trinidad be­cause they buy feed by the bulk, where­as we buy by the bag and then you have to pay trans­porta­tion costs to the port and then from the port to the farms, so we have an ex­tra added cost to pay. That’s why the prices of eggs al­ways high­er than Trinidad,” Mc­Coney said as he re-stocked the View­port Su­per­mar­ket in Rox­bor­ough.

But the ATT­TEP be­lieves this coun­try could do more to pro­duce the raw ma­te­ri­als used in an­i­mal feed, thus less­en­ing its de­pen­dence on the volatile for­eign mar­ket.

“We im­port 100 per cent of the corn that goes in­to the feeds and it is hun­dreds of tons of corn. Many lands were giv­en to the ex-Ca­roni work­ers, yet no strate­gic plan in­to what they’re plant­i­ng, so every­body plant toma­toes and egg­plant but here we have a fixed mar­ket for corn, sim­ple easy crop, no hard crop to go.”

The cost of corn and soy­bean, which are two ma­jor in­gre­di­ents in the an­i­mal feed mix, have both in­creased pre­cip­i­tous­ly since De­cem­ber 2021.

“Don’t be fooled, what they call Trinidad feed is just a prod­uct put to­geth­er in this coun­try us­ing all im­port­ed prod­ucts. We need to strate­gise to re­duce that cost of pro­duc­tion,” Mc­Coney said.