The President Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Kogi State chapter, Hassan Bello, has identified lack of access to credit facility as the challenge of poultry farmers in the country.
Hassan said this recently in an interview with our correspondent on the challenges facing poultry farmers, noting that both the state and federal governments have refused to provide the enabling environment for poultry farmers to grow.
He said most of the poultry farmers in the state do not have birds in their farms because efforts they have made to get credit facilities to improve their farms have not been successful due to unreasonable collateral demanded by the commercial banks.
“Poultry farmers are on their own now because government has abandoned them and the banks they have given agricultural fund to are not willing to give loans to poultry farmers. The banks will always ask us to come tomorrow whenever we went there for loan and by the time we get tired, we just have to leave them alone,” he said.
According to him, no poultry farmer has the collateral being demanded by the government-designated banks for loan, adding that the federal government should open an agricultural bank that will effectively cater for farmers because commercial banks are not farmers’ friendly.
He also appealed to the federal government to be realistic in its policies, stressing that they should have approached the farmers directly instead of giving money to commercial banks or invincible lenders to the detriment of the farmers.
