Architect Kabir Ibrahim is a successful poultry farmer, immediate past chairman of Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN) and now the president of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN). In this interview Daily Trust, he explains how his poultry farm is moving towards production of powdered egg in commercial quantity. Excerpts:
What can you tell us new about your poultry farm?
I started this farm in 2012, and my capacity was 50,000 birds, which is about 50 tonnes. I had a cold room and some distribution vehicles. One thing that I will tell you that will shock you is that soon after I started, insurgency intensified. I brought out one tonne (about 1,000) of my chicken to the Katsina market. I spent 14 days and I could only sell 299 kilogrammes from this 1,000 kilogrammes. I had to take the chickens to Kano to sell below my production cost and on credit. Let’s say between 2012 and now the bane of agribusiness is lack of patronage. The people are poor. There is a lot of poverty in Nigeria.
But government budgets huge sums of money annually to alleviate poverty?
The budget is not funded. If you take this year, the budget was only assented to few months ago. By December, 2015 election activities will be top of the agenda. The development or rebasing of the economy or whatever is called means nothing to the masses.
Are you still in poultry business?
Of course I am. Now we are back to egg laying business. I am going to do an egg powder plant. I will try to produce my own egg, turn it into powder, elongate its shelf life and encourage people to buy that powder. In fact, right now we are working on it. I want to start with 50,000 birds.
Is there such project in existence or you are the first to start it?
In West Africa, there is probably one that has the capacity of one tonne per day in Ogun State. It just came on board two or three months ago. What we are going to have capacity of 300,000 eggs a day. But for now we will do 120,000 eggs a day. In about six month we should be in production. Our target is to export this egg powder. In Nigeria, I believe the market is not yet going to be very good for that product. We will reduce the bacterial load in the product so it will be good enough for export.
How will the production chain be, will you be responsible up to the finished stage?
We will do everything ourselves. In fact, we will have the albumen- egg yellow, the egg white and whole egg. We can even give you liquid egg. The system can do that. So depending on what you want, we can give it to you.
The beauty of it is that, some components of the chain is cholesterol-free so that people who have problem with cholesterol level in their system will also buy our egg powder. But that is quite a lot of money and requires a lot of supervision. To survive, we have to be innovative. If you do the conventional farming, believe me, it will collapse.
I started this farm in 2012, and my capacity was 50,000 birds, which is about 50 tonnes. I had a cold room and some distribution vehicles. One thing that I will tell you that will shock you is that soon after I started, insurgency intensified. I brought out one tonne (about 1,000) of my chicken to the Katsina market. I spent 14 days and I could only sell 299 kilogrammes from this 1,000 kilogrammes. I had to take the chickens to Kano to sell below my production cost and on credit. Let’s say between 2012 and now the bane of agribusiness is lack of patronage. The people are poor. There is a lot of poverty in Nigeria.
But government budgets huge sums of money annually to alleviate poverty?
The budget is not funded. If you take this year, the budget was only assented to few months ago. By December, 2015 election activities will be top of the agenda. The development or rebasing of the economy or whatever is called means nothing to the masses.
Are you still in poultry business?
Of course I am. Now we are back to egg laying business. I am going to do an egg powder plant. I will try to produce my own egg, turn it into powder, elongate its shelf life and encourage people to buy that powder. In fact, right now we are working on it. I want to start with 50,000 birds.
Is there such project in existence or you are the first to start it?
In West Africa, there is probably one that has the capacity of one tonne per day in Ogun State. It just came on board two or three months ago. What we are going to have capacity of 300,000 eggs a day. But for now we will do 120,000 eggs a day. In about six month we should be in production. Our target is to export this egg powder. In Nigeria, I believe the market is not yet going to be very good for that product. We will reduce the bacterial load in the product so it will be good enough for export.
How will the production chain be, will you be responsible up to the finished stage?
We will do everything ourselves. In fact, we will have the albumen- egg yellow, the egg white and whole egg. We can even give you liquid egg. The system can do that. So depending on what you want, we can give it to you.
The beauty of it is that, some components of the chain is cholesterol-free so that people who have problem with cholesterol level in their system will also buy our egg powder. But that is quite a lot of money and requires a lot of supervision. To survive, we have to be innovative. If you do the conventional farming, believe me, it will collapse.
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