KUCHING: Smaller chicken farms in the state may soon close shop if the significant drop in wholesale price of eggs remains unchanged.
Owners of several farms in Kuching and Samarahan divisions are concerned, lamenting that the price of eggs had dropped to as low as RM5.99 per tray which is way below production cost.
Their spokesperson Chai Yian Foh, who has been in the industry for some 40 years, said the decline in price was due to oversupply by several farmers failing to control production.
“We estimate that two million eggs are being produced daily throughout the state, which is certainly more than what we can consume.
We have no alternative but to sell them at a rate well below production cost in order to reduce the stock.
“We just don’t have a better alternative because eggs cannot be stored for long.
They get spoiled very fast and in the end we will lose everything,” he said.
Chai, in the company of several other fellow farmers, told reporters thi s when met at Sa rawa k Livestock Breeder’s Association premises in Kota Sentosa here yesterday.
He explained that the ideal price of eggs was RM9 per tray because production cost was about RM8 per tray.
However, he said, the price of eggs had dropped drastically over the past few months and this had resulted in almost all farmers registering loses because like it or not they had to sell the commodity at unreasonably low price.
As such, he said that livestock farmers from Kuching and Samarahan divisions were appealing to others in the same industry to consider controlling their daily production so the price of eggs could return to normal.
“The truth is that many bigger farms are producing excessive eggs daily, resulting in over-supply which is not healthy. And we cannot afford to continue making loses,” he said, adding that there were about 50 small and big livestock farms in the state.
Their hope, he said, was that the situation would return to normal as soon as possible or else many smaller farms would not be able to sustain their business and would gradually be forced to close down.
“Hopefully, the bigger farms understand our problem. No doubt we have free business policy but we must be realistic in our production. We have to remember that egg is a controlled item and exporting them is prohibited,” he added.