The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

AGRICULTURE Minister V Alfred Gray says the government has not moved to close the Gladstone Road Agriculture Centre’s feeding mill amid fears from farmers of increased costs associated with sustaining livestock.

According to Mr Gray yesterday, the Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation (BAIC) is in the process of acquiring the feeding mill with a view to operating more efficiently.

While admitting frequent feed shortages, Mr Gray denied that the government did not have money in the budget to keep the mill running. Instead he attributed the problem to a slow public service money request system, which takes on average seven days. With BAIC as operator, requests for feed funding would be cut down to a matter of hours, Mr Gray told The Tribune.

“There has been a shortage of feed,” Mr Gray said, “and its not unusual for that to happen every now and then. But the government has made a decision to cause the management of the mill to be placed in the hands of BAIC so they are now managing the feed mill because they have the capacity to do things faster.

“It is not true that the government doesn’t have the money to buy feed, but the problem is sometimes getting the money takes a bit longer than usual. As Minister I am telling you it is not true.”

Concerns over the mill closure came to light last week after farmers were told that feed would become less available until the government completely phased out offering feed materials at cost.

As it stands, farmers pay $20 per 100 lbs of basic feed and up to $26 for 100 lbs of starter feed for various kinds of livestock including pigs, cows, chickens and goats.

Shawn Bowe, a pig farmer, said a 40-foot container of feed costs more than $12,000 a month. He said farmers were appreciative of the government’s feed mill which reduced out-of-pocket costs significantly.

Mr Bowe said: “The government does us a great service of importing the raw materials to mix the feed and give it to us at cost, meaning the cheapest possible price. We all benefit from it because animal feed has a shelf life of seven days so it is really useless to import it from the States because by the time as we get it, it won’t be any good. And that lowers the production of the animals. The last time another farmer and I imported a container of 750 bags of feed, by the time as we used 250 bags, the remainder was no good.”

The financial burden of feed, Mr Bowe said, also presents health implications.

“Imagine farmers who can’t afford good feed, they would then be forced to get scraps from the trash or the foodstore. With that it is no telling the chemicals or the pesticides being put into the animals.”

The official line from BAIC officials was that an emergency meeting was called late yesterday evening to address the concerns of the farmers.