Stock unavailability and high input costs are hurting Kenya's poultry industry.

 

Despite the Kenyans' adoption of healthy lifestyles that has seen wider uptake of chicken in the last year, production cost has still doubled. Growth has stagnated over the last five years mostly due to lack of incentives, said the Kenya Poultry Farmers Association (Kepofa).

 

At present, over 21 million people rely on poultry farming for their livelihood and it contributes 6.1% of the gross domestic product (GDP) generated from livestock.

 

Poultry farming uptake has boomed in Kenya's rural areas where smallholder families, especially Western, Rift Valley and Eastern provinces, have taken to the product over the last 10 years.

 

There are approximately 30 million birds in the country, of which 76% are free-range indigenous chicken, 14% are commercial layers and 8% broilers.

 

Distribution by province stands at approximately 33.6%, 26.9% and 11.2% for Nyanza, Rift Valley and Eastern provinces respectively, according to studies done by John Omiti, a senior policy analyst and head of Productive Sector Division at Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra).

 

But the industry, which offers great potential for income generation and is a major source of protein, has seen slow growth over the years in both indigenous and exotic sectors.

 

According to the Economic Survey 2010, farmers produced 22,000 tonnes of chicken in 2006, compared with 23,000 last year. Production hit a high of 24,000 tonnes in 2008.

 

Meanwhile, egg production rose to a high of 89,000 tonnes in 2008, falling to a four year low of 81,000 thousand tonnes last year.

 

"The prices given to farmers do not commensurate the production costs thus discouraging small scale farmers. The industry is under regulated leading to exploitation of small scale farmers by middlemen and traders," said Wairimu Kariuki, chairman of Kepofa.