Egyptian poultry farmers cull hundreds of chicks because of feed shortage

Corn and soya bean shipments held up at ports owing to dwindling availability of US dollars

Chickens are becoming costly to keep in Egypt owing to a feed shortage caused by dwindling foreign currency reserves. Bloomberg

Egyptian poultry farmers are culling chicks due to a feed shortage, worsening a continuing food crisis and causing chicken and egg prices to soar.

Amid a shortage of dollars, of which around 32 billion remain in Egypt’s coffers, the country has placed tight controls on imports and banks have stopped issuing letters of credit required to release shipments of corn and soya beans - the main ingredients of chicken feed - held up at ports.

The president of Egypt’s Poultry Producers Union, Mohamed El Shafei, on Saturday said that because chickens had become very costly to keep, farmers were choosing to cull them instead, a move which has diminished poultry supplies nationwide.

Videos showing farmers killing dozens of chicks were met with outrage on social media.

Mr El Shafei told talk show host Amr Adib on Saturday that 500,000 tonnes of imported corn and half that weight of soya beans were required every month to feed Egypt’s chickens.

To import that amount, the union would require $340 million every month, he said.

Mr El Shafei defended the farmers’ decision to cull the chicks, explaining that prices had been on a steady rise for months and that though the decision might seem drastic and out of the blue to viewers on social media, poultry producers have been trying to avoid making it for months to no avail.

He pleaded with the country's leadership to provide the currency necessary to import the chicken feed, pointing out that because the poultry industry employs around 10 per cent of Egypt’s labourers, any large scale closures would be catastrophic for the country’s unemployment rate.

Following a meeting of a special committee convened to solve the chicken feed crisis, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly issued a statement on Sunday mandating that there be weekly co-ordination with the union for the release of “a specific amount of feed to be released weekly, and for there to be a mechanism to monitor how that amount is distributed.

Mr Madbouly said that since the start of the month 122,000 tonnes of soya had been released from ports and that the government WAS doing all it could to ensure minimal disruptions to essential supply chains such as chicken feed but that rising food prices worldwide caused by the Russia-Ukraine war were responsible.

“No one knows how long this current war will last,” Mr Madbouly said.

Egypt’s foreign reserves have dwindled since 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic kept tourists, who contribute one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency, at home amid lockdown orders.

The country’s economic crisis was made worse by the Russia-Ukraine war which caused prices of oil and wheat to soar worldwide. Additionally, the war prevented Russians and Ukrainians, who make up 30 per cent of Egypt’s tourists, from visiting and bringing with them foreign currency.

In response to rising food prices, central banks in several countries, most notably the US, have hiked interest rates. The hikes are largely responsible for the dollar’s recent strength, which has in turn exacerbated the situation for countries like Egypt which import a large portion of their foodstuffs and pay for them in US dollars.

In addition to tightening controls on imports, the country's finance ministry has also taken steps to boosting exports in an effort to bridge the country's trade deficit, which currently stands at $20 million.

Egypt's imports amounted to around $83 billion this year, foodstuffs accounted for 24 per cent of that. The country, whose population reached 104 million earlier this month, is also the world's largest importer of wheat.