By Yero S. Bah
Gambian Poultry industry is booming as many young Gambians continue to invest in this segment of the agricultural sector to create self-employment and,by extension, opportunities for other people, despite the enormous and seemingly unending challenges in the business.
Ebrima Sanyang of Farato village, in the West Coast Region, is a young poultry farmer who started his poultry business with just one hundred birds purchased with the little savings from his meagre salary in 2018. “It wasn’t easy at all knowing our Gambian salaries,” was how he summed it up to Mansa Banko Online.
The Tellers’ Supervisor in one of the local banks recollects that, expansion of the farm started in the following year, from 100 broilers to 300 layers. And, at the moment, he has over 2,700 birds of which 1,500 birds are white layers, producing 40 crates of eggs daily, he disclosed.
As Sanyang explained, feeding constitutes over 75% of the operational cost in poultry farming, describing it as one of the biggest challenges that poultry farmers face in the Gambia since most of the chicken feeds are imported from Senegal.
The poultry farmer, who attended Nusrat school in Bundung, and Management Development Institute (MDI) in Kanifing and obtained the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) qualification, said he worked for eight years before he was able to start the poultry business. Sanyang said he’s passionate about poultry farming; “I love rearing birds.” He, however, said society always shuns individuals who go in for farming, especially if they are graduates, saying “I know how people look at you. ‘You can’t stop your work for farming here’ ”.
Sanyang sees plenty of opportunities in poultry farming, saying the first advantages are that you know your source of food, in that you eat healthy besides, monetary wise, the proceeds are huge. There is also a market readily available, he said, since local production covers only 3% of the population in the Gambia.
He however, suggested that government needs to step in in terms of providing subsidies to farmers or banning the importation of chicken legs and eggs to support the local industry. He also Notwithstanding, he posited that government could raise the importation tax if total banning isn’t applicable since authorities usually cite international trade protocols such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) that banning importation of poultry products into the Gambia would violate those international trade policies.
The Farato poultry farmer noted that some local feed mills in the country charge similar or higher prices to that of Senegal, adding the differences are just so close.
Sanyang disclosed that the poultry business is at a “standstill due to the coronavirus” since the hotels and restaurants are shutdown. He said they used to sell almost “our entire daily produce” but now they couldn’t due to the effect of the Covid pandemic on their business.
