Price of Feed Ingredients Continue to Rise

JAKARTA – Almost all prices of the feed ingredient components is on the rise. The price increase of feed ingredients is putting poultry farmers in a dire position. To survive, they must also increase the selling prices of chicken meat and eggs.
But, on the other hand, the public’s financial abilities are decreasing due to the price increase of other food commodities, such as rice, cooking oil, kerosene, vegetables, tempe, tofu, meat, and milk.
“Currently the feed price is 4,000 rupiahs per kilogram or had increased 900 rupiahs compared to six months ago. From the beginning of 2007, prices continued to rise until now,” said General Chairman of the Feed Company Association (Gabungan Pengusaha Makanan Ternak / GPMT), Budiarto, on Friday (18/1) in Medan, North Sumatra.

According to Budiarto, there is a possibility that feed price will rise another 300 rupiahs per kilogram. “The feed companies could only wait for the market to improve,” he said.
From seven components of feed, the price of six components have already increased; they  are corn, soybean meal (SBM), meat and bone meal (MBM), corn gluten meal (CGM), poultry meat meal (PMM), and crude palm oil (CPO). Only the price of dedak (a mixture of rice and bran) is still the same.
This condition will also increase the production cost of farms because 51.4 percent of feed is made from corn and 18 percent is from SBM. The others are 5 percent of fish meal, 5 percent of MBM, 7 percent of CGM and 1-2 percent of CPO. The rest is dedak.
A portion of 4 feed ingredients must be imported. Corn for example, from 3.6 million tons of corn necessary for feed about 1.77 million tons of it is imported.
In 2008, it is projected that we need around 4.07 million tons of corn, 1.62 million tons of soybean meal, 1.81 million tons of pollard, 1.21 million tons of dedak, 0.4 million tons of fish meal, and 0.4 million tons of MBM and PMM.
Budiarto said that high feed price will greatly pressure the farming business, particularly poultry farms. It is because 70 percent of the poultry production cost is from feed.
Approximately 83 percent of national feed production is consumed by poultry farms. The rest is 6 percent for hog farms, 3 percent for dairy cattle, 7 percent for aquaculture, and 1 percent for other kinds of livestock.
Source : Kompas