Hundreds of poultry farmers who are mostly involved in egg production have plunged into a hardship due to shortage of feed supply caused by the countrywide blockade.
Poultry farmers said shrinking of poultry industry in Rajshahi had started long ago as poultry farmers had not been getting reasonable price of broiler chickens and eggs. Sometimes, they were compelled to sell eggs at lower price which was below of production cost.
Now, the political unrest and continuous blockade have added misery of them.
The poultry industry of Rajshahi city area has a great contribution to fulfill the demand of eggs and boiler chickens in the northern districts of the county, according to the Rajshahi Poultry Industry Association.
Sources at the association said there were about 4,000 broiler chicken farms in Rajshahi one and a half years ago, but now the number has declined to around 2,000.
Traders said they were now facing two types of problems. One is they could not sell eggs and another is they could not manage necessary feeds and medicines for chickens.
Rezaul Karim, a poultry farmer in the city, told the Dhaka Tribune that he had a firm from where he got 400 to 500 eggs each day.
“I could not sell eggs in last five days and about 15,000 eggs have remained unsold at my poutry firm”, he said.
“If I could not sell the eggs produced at the firm how I will manage feeds and medicine for the chickens.” he asked.
The farm eggs can be stored 15 days. Many farmers already have stored eggs for about six to eight days. And if the situation would not be normal within five to six days farmers would loss a large sum of money, added Atik Khan, another farmer of city’s Buthpara area.
Atik who has a firm with 3,000 layer chickens said he was unable to arrange preservation facalities for eggs.
“We could not transport eggs to nearby districts because of the blockade.
“Now we sell 100 pieces of eggs at Tk 500 to Tk 550 to wholesalers while the traders sell the same at Tk600 to Tk650,” he added.
On the other hand, the food crisis for the firms has worsen the situation as most the feeds is come from Dhaka, Sirajganj and Bogra.
But the traders could not bring feeds for the blockade.
The prices of the feeds have also increased, said poultry feeds trader Abdur Rahman.
Rajshahi Poultry Association General Secretary Enamul Haque said it was an urgent need to resolve the situation. Otherwise, the losses of farmers will be more terrible which might collapse the poultry industry.