Palau’s livestock farmers, especially those with piggery farms, express frustrations with Bureau of Agriculture with what they say “lack of good planning and management” of the livestock programs.
Last Wednesday, during Presidential Press Conference, Director of Bureau of Agriculture, Fred Sengebau announced that Palau has received a grant from Japan to promote chicken production as part of Palau’s food security program.
“We are about to distribute cages and 24 chickens per household to eligible households starting in Ngeremlengui State with whom we’ve signed an MOU,” revealed Director Sengebau. They plan to implement this with each of the States that sign an MOU with Bureau of Agriculture.
“They are talking about expanding chicken production but they are barely managing the piggery which they started over 5 years ago,” stated a disgruntled livestock farmer who viewed the press conference on Wednesday.
“They don’t even have piglets after 5 years and lots of trainings later. They blame that on lack of flights from Taiwan, saying they can’t bring in pig semen. They have received hundreds of thousands of dollars, why haven’t they built a freezer capacity to store semen. Now we are at mercy of covid. Where is the food security here?”, expressed the local farmer, whose name is withheld by request.
Director Sengebau had reported that they have not been able to bring in pig semen because of flight disruptions due to COVID pandemic. He also reported that they are contemplating bringing pig stock from Yap and Guam to breed here but these too are impacted by limited flights.
It was reported that Japan was granting $1.8 million to help with chicken production which include chicken slaughterhouse with meat processing. Sengebau reported that $500k will be used to continually provide chickens and feeds to identified low-income households in each State for a year. “Savings the families gain from this can be used toward their own chickens and feed after the program is done,” added the BOA director.
“There are at least 4 grants according to report to OEK by Bureau of Agriculture, a $500k, $200k, $1.8 million and $3.4 million from various sources including Japan and Taiwan. The grants are for different purposes such as the chicken program and fruit fly eradication. There are no piglets, and they are buying heavy equipment and chicken cages. And their people don’t know how to inseminate pigs with stored semen. The five pigs that they inseminated, none got pregnant,” relates the livestock farmer. Adding, “meanwhile some farmers are complaining about fruit flies and excess farm products that they can’t sell. Why not use some of that $500k to buy local excess farm products and make feed with them? At least the money will go around, rather than buying feed from Taiwan that Taiwan bought from the US.”
Director Sengebau said that they were looking to import raw feed products from South Africa. “Tapioca can be used as feed but it has too much water and processing it locally will cost more than imported feed.” He added that the cost of imported feed is cheap but the cost of freight is what makes it so expensive when it arrives in Palau.
Farmers interviewed by Island Times say that BOA is operating on day-to-day basis with no long-term plans of developing the livestock industry. “I think they and the donor countries think we are too stupid to learn to produce livestock ourselves. They think they are the only ones that can do it and provide us with stocks. They can select five farmers to be breeders and just help them breed the pigs and breeders can provide stock to rest of us. BOA can just provide semen to breed stocks, monitor and help with training. They don’t have to spend money building unnecessary buildings and stuff. Use that money to help local farmers.”