By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian farming advocate has described the Government’s agriculture policy as akin to “scrambled eggs” with last week’s mass importation of cheap eggs running counter to efforts to boost local production.

Caron Shepherd, the Bahamas Agro Entrepreneurs Group’s president, told Tribune Business that Super Value’s mass purchase of cut-price eggs from the Dominican Republic effectively undermines - at least in the short-term - the Davis administration’s stated policy objective of expanding domestic production via the multi-million dollar Golden Yoke initiative.

Asserting that “nothing has happened” in the two years since it was unveiled, she argued that the Bahamian people would have been better served if the Government had invested the $15m allocated to the Golden Yoke programme directly with existing Bahamian egg farmers so that they could expand production.

Ms Shepherd asserted that, if this had happened, The Bahamas would have been producing more of its own eggs and not have to rely so heavily on mass imports from the Dominican Republic to slash sky-high egg prices that have been driven up by bird flu in the US. She branded last week’s Super Value shipment as “a stop-gap measure” and compared it to “a band aid on major surgery”.

Suggesting that Bahamians have little choice but to “trust” their health and safety regulators that the imported eggs are fit for human consumption, Ms Shepherd told this newspaper that local farmers are unable to compete on price with their Dominican Republic rivals because they lack the funding and resources to scale-up production and generate economies of scale.

“We still have egg producers here, but they are not able to produce on that large scale because they don’t have the funding,” she said. “Obviously, it negatively affects us because, one, we are having eggs come in at a cheaper rate. That’s number one. As long as the farmers have the resources to expand production, increase the size of their farms, they are going to produce more eggs.

“Definitely we need to get the resources in place and expand the production of farmers doing egg production at the moment, which is what we’ve been agitating for for at least ten years. They cannot compete with the prices coming in from the Dominican Republic immediately but, eventually, yes. Once they are able to expand, they’ll be able to do it, and eventually we’ll be able to put a moratorium on egg importation.”

Asked whether the mass importation of cheap egg imports runs counter to, and in a way undermines, the Government’s stated objectives of slashing The Bahamas’ food import bill by 25 percent, boosting domestic production and enhancing food security and the country’s ability to feed itself, Ms Shepherd agreed that it does.

However, while it does immediately satisfy Bahamian demand for cheaper eggs, she added that the benefits may only be short-term. “It does undermine that process,” Ms Shepherd told Tribune Business. “However, it doesn’t necessarily stop it - our goals and objectives to increase egg production in The Bahamas to a level where we don’t have to import eggs.

“It’s a stop-gap measure they’ve put in place. It’s a temporary fix. We need to have a long-term solution to egg production. Now, they’re trying to appease the community by saying ‘we’ve got eggs, we’ve got eggs’. However, that was not the objective to just get eggs.

“The objective is for us to produce our eggs, reduce the imports and put a dent in importation. They have done a stop-gap measure that’s a temporary fix. They have put a band aid on major surgery. The objective was not the mass importation of eggs,” she added.

“The farmers know how to grow eggs. They already know how to produce eggs. I’m sure if they had pumped the $15m [for the Golden Yolk project] into existing egg producers we would not have an egg shortage today or eggs at $13 a dozen. I’m quite sure of that. They did not think this process through properly. It’s scrambled eggs.”

Turning her attention to the much-hyped Golden Yolk initiative, Ms Shepherd said: “Nothing is happening. Where they had the ground-breaking nothing is there, absolutely nothing. The ground is as parched as parched can be. Nothing exists. Not a chicken, not a grow house. We had fanfare, everything going on, and 24 months later there’s nothing in existence where you had the ground-breaking.....

“What should have been done differently is the $15m should have been invested with the egg producing farmers and those farmers would have been able to increase the production of their eggs. At least we would have eggs now. It should have been a capital injection into the existing egg producers. The egg producers can then expand their business and produce more eggs.

“It should be the farmers themselves doing what they do best, and that’s farm. The Government just needs to put the necessary facilities in place for the farmers to do what they do best. They could have provided those grow houses to existing chicken producers to let them do what they have to do. That would be more productive.”

When the Golden Yolk initiative was unveiled at end-February 2023, the Government’s ambition was that it would slash the country’s food import bill by $12.5m annually. The aim was to increase Bahamian egg production from 750,000 to more than 27 million eggs per year, with 38 new egg houses established on 12 islands and 13m eggs produced in the Family Islands. These eggs were to be priced at $4.

Journalists were taken to view D & T Farms on Gladstone Road, described as a public-private partnership (PPP) initiative, which currently houses 2,000 egg-laying chickens providing over 70 dozen eggs on a daily basis. The farm also houses a piggery.

A site that currently houses 10,000 chicks which arrived in The Bahamas recently was also viewed. Government officials said they will be part of the ‘Golden Yoke’ initiative that is being overseen by Justin Taylor, a poultry scientist and expert in the field of chicken farming. At the same site, there are currently 1,000 layers already providing eggs for general consumption.

Troy Sampson, BAIC general manager, said it is anticipated that around 20,000 eggs will be available for local consumption once the initiative gets underway. Jomo Campbell, minister of agriculture and marine resources, said he does not want the Golden Yolk initiative to be seen as a “golden joke”, adding that it is “real”.

“The birds are real, the infrastructure is real, the land is real, the people are real and the benefits, the most important part for the Bahamian people, is as real as [it] could ever be,” he argued. The minister added that vendors selected for the programme will sell their eggs to the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) or Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation (BAIC).

Then will then resell these eggs to the public at a lower price. Explaining the advantage of being an archipelago building an egg production industry, Mr Campbell added that if one island experiences a problem with its chicks, the other islands can make up for it.

“So now we have several different locations, islands and cays that are going to be totally self-sufficient with eggs,” Mr Campbell said. “So unlike some of our brothers and sister countries that are one land mass, when they’re impacted by a disease like bird flu, it wipes out everything.

“Fortunately for us in The Bahamas, if we have an outbreak in Andros, we’re able to alleviate that with our other islands that are separated by bodies of water. So we want to show people not just the natural sun, sand and sea beauty of it, but the fact that we have an advantage in an industry to ensure that what we provide to the general public is safe and sound and will be consistent. And that’s the key for us.”