Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

De­spite de­ci­sions by Nu­trim­ix Feeds Ltd to de­crease the price of all an­i­mal feed prod­ucts two months ago, farm­ers are still strug­gling with high prices and ris­ing labour costs. Checks by the Busi­ness Guardian re­vealed that the prices of dairy ra­tions for milk­ing cows, ru­mi­nant, as well as all poul­try feeds ex­cept 14 per cent (crude pro­tein) pel­let, re­main con­stant. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cat­tle Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Chris Med­ford, said there has been a slight re­duc­tion in dairy ra­tion for non-milk­ing cows (pel­let) which is used for bulls, heifers and preg­nant cows.

"It has dropped from about $90 a bag to $70 a bag. The rea­son was that Nu­trim­ix start­ed sell­ing ra­tion for non-milk­ing cows at a re­duced price. It was ad­ver­tised and oth­er com­pet­ing mills–in­clud­ing the state-con­trolled Na­tion­al Flour Mills–had to meet the com­pe­ti­tion and so they re­duced prices to match," Med­ford said. He ex­plained, how­ev­er, that all-pur­pose feeds for ducks, broil­ers, sheep and goat re­main high. "We are see­ing no re­duc­tions in dairy ra­tions for milk pro­duc­ing cows which range be­tween $80 to $110 a bag. Milk­ing cows re­quire a min­i­mum of 16 crude pro­tein con­tent for sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion. The feed must in­clude ground corn, soya, brew­ers spent grain and wheat mid­dling from flour," Med­ford ex­plained.

He added that Wean N' Grow feed used for calves has been re­duced by $2, but duck grow­er, fin­ish­er re­main the same price. Med­ford com­plained that labour costs were still high. "Right now you can't get a farm work­er for less than $150 a day," Med­ford said. Mean­while, In­ter­im Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Sheep and Goat Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Shi­raz Khan, said he has seen no re­duc­tion at all in any types of an­i­mal feeds. "The price of feed has re­mained con­stant for the past months apart from when Nu­trim­ix re­duced their feed the price of feed by 30 per cent. How­ev­er, de­spite this de­crease, we have not seen any drop in prices at the re­tail out­lets," Khan said.

Khan–who rears sheep, goat, bulls, geese, pea­cocks, ducks and turkeys–said farm­ers were strug­gling to com­pete with the heav­i­ly sub­sidised for­eign im­ports which was cre­at­ing a dent in their prof­itabil­i­ty. Khan said lo­cal meat pro­duc­ers could not raise their prices be­cause im­port­ed meat was sell­ing cheap­er. Quot­ing from a re­cent feed bill, Khan said a bag of starter broil­er feed stayed steady at $158 a bag, while crack corn sold for $137 a bag. "We have no­ticed with­in the last month that Nu­trim­ix spoke of sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in prices but this has not fil­tered down to us," Khan said. He added that the price of an­i­mal drugs such as worm­ers, vi­t­a­mins, an­tibi­otics and oth­er sup­ple­ments have al­so in­creased as whole­salers com­plained about high trans­porta­tion and freight costs.

"These drugs and sup­ple­ments are ex­pect­ed to go up. I pay $125 for a litre of wormer and just re­cent­ly it went up by $4. We heard that the cost of trans­port­ing con­tain­ers have gone up by 50 per­cent and this will cause an au­to­mat­ic in­crease in the prices," Khan said. He ex­plained that all in­puts for farm­ers have in­creased mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for sur­vival. "We will now have to pay high­er land and prop­er­ty tax­es so soon we will not be able to main­tain a liveli­hood in agri­cul­ture," Khan said. He not­ed that if the Gov­ern­ment did not ex­tend as­sis­tance to farm­ers, T&T will suf­fer as it will be­come even more de­pen­dent on for­eign food im­por­ta­tion. Like Med­ford, Khan said the price of lo­cal meats like lamp, beef and pork, will not go up be­cause of lo­cal meat im­ports.

Nu­trim­ix shock

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Nu­trim­ix vice pres­i­dent, Ron­nie Mo­hammed, ex­pressed shock that farm­ers were com­plain­ing about high prices. He said, "I am sur­prised by this be­cause at the end of Ju­ly we re­duced prices in all of our feeds and those price de­crease ranged from 7.0 to 41 per cent." Mo­hammed said the de­crease was tar­get­ed di­rect­ly to as­sist farm­ers. "We do not know why they are not ben­e­fit­ing from this. One will as­sume that as feed de­pots ob­tain cheap­er feed prices they will pass that on to the cus­tomers," Mo­hammed said.

Giv­ing a break­down of the sta­tis­tics, Mo­hammed said swine grow­er dropped as much as 17 per cent, while duck fin­ish­er dropped as much 13 per cent. "We al­so had broil­er fin­ish­er de­creas­ing by 16 per cent. We had de­creas­es in every an­i­mal feed be­ing sold." He added that the price re­duc­tion of feeds such as dairy pel­let, broil­er starter and fin­ish­er, duck starter, grow­er and fin­ish­er, sow lac­ta­tion and ges­ta­tion, among oth­er prod­ucts was ex­pect­ed to bring re­lief to farm­ers. The dairy pel­let (all pur­pose), he said, has been re­duced from $85 to $49.99, a de­crease of 41.18 per cent.

The price of broil­er starter has been re­duced by $25.47, from $160.47 to $135. An of­fi­cial from Lin­da's Agro Cen­tre, a feed de­pot lo­cat­ed at Welling­ton Road, Debe said their cus­tomers have been ben­e­fit­ing from cheap­er feed prices. The source ex­plained that 14 per cent pel­let has been re­duced from $75 a bag last year to $48. How­ev­er, she ex­plained that re­tail­ers had no de­creas­es in the prices of broil­er feeds such as fin­ish­er, starter, grow­ing marsh, pig grow­er and corn. The of­fi­cial said once prices are low­ered, ben­e­fits will be passed on the cus­tomers.