Ostrich farmers in debt as government withdraws subsidy

Nascent sector on the verge of collapse due to provincial administration’s lack of interest

LAHORE:

With the subsidy provided by the government now withdrawn, ostrich farmers are beginning to experience serious financial setbacks.

According to details gathered by The Express Tribune, farmers in business for almost a decade, have suffered financial losses and risk being drawn into further debt as they are forced to take on additional loans. 

While the provincial administration had initially welcomed investment into the nascent project and had even rewarded farmers who undertook the import of ostrich, in 2018 it decided to reverse the subsidy, declaring the ostrich farming project as not being a priority. 

“I took a loan from the bank in 2018 to start my ostrich farming business and imported 50 ostrich chicks. My business was booming until the government decided to halt the subsidy policy after a couple of months. From that point onwards I started suffering in my business and was also in debt to the ostrich exporters. As a last resort, I had to sell all the birds for a pittance,” revealed Mohammad Ibrahim, an ostrich farmer from Kahna, near Lahore.

Over the years, the poultry sector in Pakistan, has emerged as an immensely profitable business. Apart from their quick breeding time, birds are demanded for consumption because of their meat and eggs being cheap sources of nutritious animal protein. In fact, the government, realizing this growing market demand for chicken and eggs, had subsidized their production by awarding subsidies worth Rs 634 million to rooster and hen farmers and distributing free chicken to destitute families.

In 2014, a new bird, the ostrich was introduced in the farming sector, when the Punjab Assembly ordered the capture of wildlife ostrich for livestock farming. Following its onset, the Ostrich Farming Project gained popularity when in 2015, Livestock Punjab announced a subsidy worth Rs 10,000 to farmers for each imported ostrich. As more farmers started investing in the burgeoning business, in 2016 the ostrich was given the status of poultry and by 2018 there were already 450 ostrich farms across the Punjab.

In addressing the outcry of the farmers resenting the reversal of the subsidy, Livestock Punjab’s Director of Communications, Dr. Asif Rafiq said, “Even though the Ostrich Farming Project was yielding positive results in terms of consumer growth and profit generation, it was nevertheless a temporary investment and was never a priority for the government, which has many other important projects to fund with a limited number of resources”.

In response to the government’s abrupt withdrawal of funding for the ostrich farming initiative, Aamir Hayat Bhandara, a progressive farmer and founder of Agriculture Republic, said, “When government’s keep changing, one can expect their policies too to be short-lived. Due to these haphazard policy reversals, not only do the local farmers suffer losses but the foreign exporters, too, become wary of investing their money and capital into a country with such unstable projects”.  Bhandara urged government bodies to show consistency in their policies so that initiated projects can reach completion.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2023.