The West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) has engaged a selection of qualified Ghanaian poultry industry anchor farmers and production groups to straighten-out final arrangements for the take-off of the FSRP Poultry Intensification Scheme. The scheme targets the production of at least 2million broiler birds by the end of this year, to contribute to the Ministry of Food & Agriculture’s strategy to revive the broiler industry and increase the rate of adoption of modern and improved climate–resilient poultry production, processing & marketing techniques.

In line with FSRP strategic sub-regional arrangements, Ghana is to focus on Rice, Maize, Soyabeans and broiler Poultry, under a $150m World Bank funding, of which $12.5m has been assigned to the first phase of the FSRP Poultry Intensification Scheme to support poultry farmers with inputs. Each phase of the scheme will run for 3 years. At the end of each production year, the anchor farmer would pay-back 70% of the input costs and retain 30% of the amount for re-investment into the general operations of the business.

The deliberations bordered around critical value chain issues including: feed quality and supply, vaccinations, strict compliance with bio-security requirements, monitoring of the weight and general healthcare of the birds, the quantities to be supplied per cycle, processing and packaging, the timeliness of delivery, the pricing and marketing of frozen processed Ghanaian broilers.

Present at the brainstorming session were lead poultry industrialists including, Mr. Victor Oppong Agyei, President of the Poultry Farmers Association who expressed gratitude to Government and the World Bank for instituting the FSRP Poultry Intensification Scheme and pledged members’ compliance with the modalities of the scheme for the ultimate advancement of the Ghanaian poultry industry.

Senior officials of the Animal Production Department and the Veterinary Services Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) prompted the industrialists that the quality of their birds, packaging, strict professionalism, and perfection in the conduct of poultry business are key to guaranteed ready markets and mass patronage. Mr. Osei Owusu Agyeman, Project Coordinator of FSRP highlighted the three key guiding principles of FSRP, being ‘Sustainability, Ownership and Public-private partnership’ and challenged beneficiaries to strive to ensure that the Ghanaian poultry industry thrives and expands beyond the scheme.