Poultry Sector Braces for Economic Shock!
The impact of the COVID-19 is being felt everywhere. While the agro-productive sector is considered essential – it is also not immune to the shocks locally. As we’ve reported this week, this sector is trying to adjust and respond to the changes. The poultry sector has started to feel the pinch; the largest poultry producer has experienced a fifty-percent drop in sales which also impacts the poultry farmers. To understand the scope of the matter and how the Spanish Lookout poultry producer is responding, we spoke with Allan Reimer. Here’s the story.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Quality Poultry Products sales have fallen drastically – by fifty percent.
Allan Reimer
Allan Reimer, Chairman of Board of Directors, Quality Poultry Products
“Three hundred or four hundred thousand pounds per week to all of a sudden less than half of that maybe one hundred and fifty to one hundred eighty thousand pounds. You can imagine that a lot of adjustments need to be made and it needs to be made very quickly.”
The sharp decline wasn’t something that poultry producers were ready for. This is a market shock that they haven’t quite experienced before.
Allan Reimer
“Nobody saw it coming – not the government; not us. We were ill-prepared and we are finding out now that we were not well prepared for a drastic shock like that. We have had some smaller shocks; the bigger one being when we had the avian influenza about six or seven-years ago but that didn’t affect the market side that affected the production side. So, on the market side where the market simply eroded away we have never had something like this, nothing near to it. This is the very first time in the history of poultry that the market has shifted so drastically.”
…and Quality Poultry Products was pushed to respond to get the surplus products out of the freezers – but that alone won’t stop the losses. And while the poultry processing plant is still running at full production that may change soon – because of the decline in market demand.
Allan Reimer
“Five weeks ago we had no change in market and we were still placing the full amount of chicks and the baby chicks are growing out now so we have no option to keep on producing. So, we are still producing at full capacity and we will be producing for this entire week and next week and that is when the chick placement cuts will come into effect and that is the first time we will cut production.”
…and that’s when the poultry farmers will feel the full force of this shock. Allan Reimer says these farmers are now in damage control – they have had to get rid of a large percentage of the breeder stocks.
Allan Reimer
“On the breeder side, which are the hens that produce the fertile eggs to go into the factory, I think as you know and follow on social media, a lot of those hens were donated to surrounding villages just to be consumed. They are forty and fifty dollars hen but instead of just throwing them away we have been able to move all hens and donated them away to go to some good cause. But that is not the case for all the products that we haven’t been fortunate enough to all give away. At this time all the farmers are still in damage control. They haven’t given the recovery phase a thought yet and they are still in damage control trying to control the hemorrhaging of their funds that they lose everyday seeing their fifty-dollar hens going for free but they are at least glad that they don’t have to run up the feed bill anymore.”
What does this mean for the consumers? It is too early to tell because the situation is changing rapidly from day to day. Reimer says that consumers may have to get used to frozen chicken products, as a result of this.
Allan Reimer
“The Belizeans they prefer the fresh chicken over frozen chicken. But given the situation where we have had to freeze chicken by the millions of pounds, I see a shift coming that the consumer will probably have to resort more to the frozen chicken versus to the fresh chicken that they prefer. But again everything is very fluid and dynamic. Again, I can’t rule out that we will have a chicken shortage but at this moment, I do not foresee.”
This is something the Spanish Community is learning about as things move along – while they remain optimistic about the future, they are still concerned about how deep this cut will run through the poultry sector.
Allan Reimer
“These lessons that we are learning they will linger in the minds of these people for quite some time and they will influence decision making. We are finding that being the bread basket of the country comes with a much higher risk than we had ever known. Nobody to blame. This whole pandemic caught everybody by surprise. So, we are not complaining or blaming anybody. We are all in this boat together and we are learning and making decisions. We find that some decisions are not probably wise decisions and we learn from them and we will keep learning from them. The spirit generally is optimistic yet; let’s get food security in line; let’s get through this and everything predictable again and move on with life. But right now there is some hesitation about the future, how deep will this still run.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
