NEWS

Cobb customers learn new insights on grandparent management in latest webinar series

COBB CUSTOMERS LEARN NEW INSIGHTS ON GRANDPARENT MANAGEMENT  IN LATEST WEBINAR SERIES

Cobb experts shared valuable knowledge and recommendations on grandparent management with customers managing flocks in 32 countries around the world. Cobb’s first “Grandparent Standard” webinar series received over 2,000 registrations and ran from November until early February and included nine episodes on many topics important to grandparent customers. The next series begins in March, so customers should watch for details on how to register in the next few weeks.

“Our experts work hard every day to help customers improve their operations,” said Richard Weatherley, grandparent account manager for Cobb Europe. “We were thrilled to reach so many customers in this new webinar series, helping support better outcomes for flocks. We will continue working to enable more people in the field to benefit from our grandparent management advice.”

Experts from the Cobb Europe team and the Cobb World Tech Services team regularly shared guidance with customers on topics such as nutrition, brooding, male management, biosecurity, genetic purity, rearing, and production. The final episode gathered every speaker from the series together to answer questions on any topic covered. The series drew a wide audience of customers from Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Cobb also offered translation services to Russian- and Chinese-speaking customers.

“Attending the webinars was really beneficial to me and I found the sessions informative,” said Yakooth Naleem, managing director of Bairaha Farms PLC in Sri Lanka. “They covered a wide range of topics which were well presented by the Cobb team and there were a number of key points to take away. I look forward to joining the second series and hearing more about other grandparent management topics.”

“We are already preparing to make our next webinar series on grandparent management in March as beneficial as possible for our customers by listening to them and creating new content,” said Weatherley. “We have no doubt there will be another strong turnout.”

Cobb customers interested in attending future webinars or hearing the insights shared in this series should contact their technical service representative. The webinars complement resources available on Cobb’s website. Anyone may visit cobb-vantress.com/resource to stay up to date with some of the best and latest information in the industry.

South Korea's chicken exports reach new high in 2020

S. KOREA'S CHICKEN EXPORTS REACH NEW HIGH IN 2020 

A new report shows that South Korea’s chicken exports hit a new high last year, capitalizing on increasing demand for ready-to-eat meals.

South Korea’s chicken exports touched a new high in 2020 amid growing worldwide demand for ready-to-eat products and the popularity of Korean pop culture, a report showed.

Overseas shipments of processed chicken came to $21 million last year, up 59.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the report from the Korea International Trade Association.

KITA said the jump came as exports of packaged traditional chicken soup, or samgyetang, and chicken breast spiked due to the coronavirus-induced demand for home meal replacements and the Korean Wave, or the overseas popularity of Korean dramas, movies and music.

The United States was South Korea‘s largest chicken export market last year, with shipments to the world’s No. 1 economy reaching $5.9 million, or 28.1 percent of the total. (Yonhap)

SOURCE: www.thepoultrysite.com

The British Poultry Council has issued a statement on Defra's consultation on welfare in transport, arguing that the proposed measures are based on outdated research.

March 4, 2021

British Poultry Council, Chief Executive, Richard Griffiths, said:

“Bird welfare in the UK is world-class, science-based, and continually improving. Health and well-being of our birds is of the highest priority and in everyone’s interest. We are disappointed that the Government consultation suggests implementing significant changes to the requirements for the transport of birds without investing in the necessary scientific research and evidence base to support such changes. It is crucial that further research is conducted to assess welfare in transport using modern broiler genotypes and transport systems. Making legislative changes without latest research would be both premature and potentially damaging to the strides made in bird welfare during transport over the last 25 years.”

 

What is wrong with Defra’s proposals?

Defra’s proposals can potentially cripple British poultry meat supply chain as they prevent the consistent, secure, and just-in-time flow of birds from farms to processing plants. These proposals will cause significant disruption to the poultry meat supply chain and severely impact industry’s ability to supply fresh poultry meat to meet the growing consumer demand across retail and food service. This will also have a knock-on impact on British food security and lead to dilution of standards due to cheaper imports – all of which is unacceptable.

Limiting journey time of broilers to slaughter to a max 4 hours (including loading and unloading) will result in a 50% reduction in the total number of broiler journeys in the UK, which will have a catastrophic impact on UK food security as well as the local economy (as farms will have to be taken out of the supply base). Also, limiting the transport of day-old chicks to 21 hours would prevent over 70% of UK breeding stock exports and force primary breeding companies to move their breeding programmes to other countries.

Prohibiting both short and long poultry journeys when the external temperature is outside the range of 5-25 degrees Celsius would result in the cancellation of most journeys in January and February as well as a significant percentage of journeys in November, December, March, and April. Implementing this requirement would mean a complete change to the poultry transport fleet resulting in an additional cost of £55 million without any evidence-based guarantee of better welfare for the birds.

Preventing the passage of day-old chicks on ferries at the last minute where wind speed is more than 23mph would increase the likelihood of destruction of valuable day olds.

 

SOURCE: www.thepoultrysite.com

Economic opportunities in the trade of soya

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES IN THE TRADE OF SOYA

The word “Soy” itself originated as a corruption of the Chinese or Japanese names for soy sauce; yet, soybeans were a crucial crop in East Asia long before written records began. Soybean first arrived in Africa, via Egypt, from China in 1857 and has now spread to different parts of the continent. It is now a major crop in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, India and China.

As published by M. Shahbandeh, a research expert in agriculture and FMCG, from 2015/16 to 2018/2019, the United States was the leading global producer of soybeans with a production volume of 120.52 million metric tons in 2018/2019. As of May 2020, Brazil overtook the United States as the leading soybean producing country with a volume of some 124 million metric tons in 2019/20. The United States; Brazil; and Argentina are the world’s three largest soybean producers and represent more than 80% of global soybean production. In 2016, the average worldwide yield for soybean crops was 2.8 tonnes per hectare and the three largest yields per hectare were in Turkey, Georgia and Italy, having an average nationwide soybean yield of 4.0 tonnes.

Anyone who makes the decision to trade in soy has a number of economic opportunities available to him/her. China, for example, imports more soybeans than it produces. As its economy expands, its demand for agricultural commodities will only grow. Similarly, India and emerging countries in Africa will require more food to feed their people as their economies grow. Additionally, as countries with emerging markets grow wealthier, their consumption of meat will likely increase and since soymeal is used to produce livestock feed, your guess is as good as mine.

One other economic opportunity soy offers is the innumerable uses as part of our everyday diet. Whether as an oil used in margarine or as the key ingredient in soy milk and the like; soy’s versatility makes it a viable trading commodity in a large number of markets, which offers the soy processor a wider consumer base than most other commodities and by extension, offers an individual who decides to farm soy a larger field of potential customers for his/her produce.

PALS 2021 goes VIRTUAL

PALS 2021 goes VIRTUAL

To the kind attention of: The Exports / Sales manager,

As part of measures to help curb the recent surge in Corona virus cases in the country and following the President's most recent directives, the Pals Africa team including a few key sponsors have decided to go VIRTUAL! Yes, you read it right. Pals Africa 2021 will be VIRTUAL!
The exhibition dates still remains from 28th to the 30th of October 2021. However, the venue has changed and all other information regarding the exhibition will be shared as and when available.

PALS Africa 2021 will feature training sections, workshops, alongside investor engagements and large volume buyer meetings. Among others, exhibitors will show latest and game-changing agricultural equipment for land preparation, farm management and harvesting, produce preservation and processing machines, crop protection equipment and products, crop enhancement products, fertilizer manufacturing components and technologies, livestock (bovine, poultry, piggery) farming equipment, dairy and meat technologies, veterinary medicines and equipment etc. The exhibitions will also feature training institutions, trading associations, pharmaceutical companies, large volume buyers / agro-processing and packaging companies.

Be on the look-out for more info. And remember to stay safe by following all the necessary protocols as per directed by the health ministry.

Look forward to e-meet you.

 

‘COVID-19 Offers Useful Lessons For Ghana’

Chief Executive Officer of Poultry, Aquaculture and Livestock Show (PALS) African, John Bewuah Edusei says the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic offers useful lessons for Ghana to work towards becoming self-sufficient economically.

According to him, the time is ripe for the nation to think of producing its own food, and other goods and services to cater for the needs of the people since the COVID-19 has laid bare the real challenges of the country.

He has, therefore, called on government to redirect all effort at creating a reliable food system that is dependent on local production, particularly in the area of poultry and food crops such as rice.

Yellow melon fruit left to rot on farms…as farmers bemoan lack of market

Farmers cultivating cucumis melon, also known as yellow melon, say a chunk of their produce is left to go waste because of the lack of market – a situation they say is adversely affecting their livelihood.

The farmers from the Northern, North East and Central Regions were hoping to cash-in on the bumper harvest of this year’s crop season – but had to face the lack of market. The situation, according to them, is affecting their investment into the production that serves as source of livelihood.

A visit to some farms at Tugu, Zakarayili, in the Northern Region; Nananom, Obidan and Suprudu in the Central Region; as well as Gambaga, Nalerigu and some communities in the North East, revealed a sad story as heaps of yellow melons are left to rot.

A farmer at Obidan, Nana Ekow Edu, in an interview with the B&FT blamed the situation on lack of knowledge about the product among people in the area. “I have been cultivating vegetables and fruit farming to feed my family for many years, and when the market is slow it affects my livelihood,” he said.

He added that one of the challenges for farmers is the lack of a ready market for their produce. As a result, he said, middlemen take advantage of their plight to purchase the products at low cost.

Another farmer, Zainabu from Tugu, said lack of transport makes it difficult to convey products to the market, and that this sometimes compel farmers to feed the melons to animals. They therefore urged government to initiate steps to attract investors in order to establish a yellow melon juice processing factory in the country.

Build more irrigation facilities, physically-challenged farmer to President Akufo-Addo

Mr Kofi Vinyo, the 2020 National Physically-Challenged Best Farmer has appealed to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to prioritize and build irrigation facilities in his next government, to make agriculture attractive.

He emphasised that lack of irrigation facilities and dams remained huge challenges in the agriculture sector, and farmers in general expected the next Akufo-Addo’s government to address that and strengthened the Planting for Food and Jobs (PfFJs) programme.

Mr Vinyo who was also adjudged the National Best Maize Farmer in 2016, and Managing Director of the Kofi Vinyo Company Limited, an agro-processing company at Kwatire made the appeal in an interview with Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Kwatire in the Sunyani West Municipality.

The company, which has 50 employees and 200 casual workers processed tiger nuts, and plantain into powder for export and domestic consumption and it has 127 acres of tiger nuts, 50 acres of coconut, 6 million snails, 200 acres of cashew and over 100 acres of plantain and cocoyam.

2020: a business year in COVID-19… A review

2020 has been one heck of a year. It was meant to be the beginning of a new decade with fresh optimism and hope of better things to come. But then it had its own plans and that plan was delivered in the shape of a global pandemic called COVID-19.

Since the arrival of the pandemic, businesses have been hit significantly but then also these businesses, across all sectors and regions, have shown how resilient they are to anything including a pandemic.

The highly experienced journalists in the Business and Financial Times’ (B&FT) newsroom took time out to review the year across sectors and regions. Enjoy the read.

Pandemic redefines and digitises the economy

Banks are ready to finance agriculture

 

Commercial banks are ready to pump more funds into the agriculture sector if additional measures are introduced to de-risk the sector, the Head of Agribusiness at Absa Bank, William Nettey, said.

According to him, the nature of banking makes every institution hesitant to invest funds in a venture that seems to be of high risk; most times because of inadequate information which impedes proper planning, projection, and the requisite cover needed to promote disbursement of funds.

“With these, we are able to work with some insurance companies to ensure that we cover our risks. The information helps us to partner with some financial institution so they buy some of the risks we are taking on, and also help to reduce interest rates for the farmer or agribusiness person coming for the facility. The use of technology has also helped to cut down the risk as well, and buildings being put up to prevent post-harvest losses are also helping,” Mr. Nettey said.

Attention

ATTENTION ! ATTENTION !! ATTENTION !!!