LAST?OCTOBER Tropical Storm Tomas battered Barbados and devastated many households.
While the spotlight has been on the many homes that lost their roofs or were destroyed, little notice has been paid the agricultural sector, which took the hardest hit. In fact, many in this key economic sector are still in the recovery process four months after the event, including the poultry industry.
After Tomas, it was discovered that over 95 000 chickens had died and poultry farmers would have lost well over $1 million collectively.
Last year Barbados produced about eight million chickens for consumption, about one million less than the previous year.
Wendell Clarke, president of the Barbados Egg & Poultry Producers’ Association (BEPPA) and managing director of Star Chick Limited, told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that almost four months after Tropical Storm Tomas, the poultry sector was still ailing and recovery was very slow.
“There has not been any forthcoming major financial assistance granted to the sector as yet. There are some farmers who are still down. Some are down, some up, some halfway up, and some are trying to get up.
“In this sector, it is highly capital-intensified – which means it takes a lot of money to put back up a poultry house, then to furnish it with equipment. Actually it costs more than when you are building a regular house.
“The fact is that it is very expensive. And we would like to get some assistance in this sector. We are thinking and trying our best to see how we can get around it,” he said.
The BEPPA president said a number of the island’s poultry producers were already making preparations in case there was another disaster this year.
“Improvements mean that we would be building wind-tunnel houses and one of them costs just over half a million dollars. The industry has plenty of them but they are very expensive.
The cost to maintain this industry is high,” he said.
“We are in discussions and are looking at some methods to protect the industry if anything like that should happen again”.
Meanwhile, Golden Ridge Farms Inc.’s managing director, who asked not to be named, said the St George farm was still recovering but there was “no tremendous loss”.
“We had some flooding in the pens and we lost some of the livestock but not a tremendous amount. I really can’t say we had any big problem. We were pretty lucky. We lost about 200 turkeys and 150 broilers. It is a big loss in terms of the number of birds but our pens were not really damaged,” she said.
Efforts to reach a number of the island’s other poultry farmers were unsuccessful up to Press time.