Addisu Wodajo is a regular in chicken houses. His favourite meats are goat and chicken. When he is not out eating chicken, he is often cooking one at home. Lately, he is paying more for his favourite food, regardless of whether he is eating out or at home. It is not that he is eating more, but rather because the market has been hit by a shortage.
During the past week, the only place he could find chicken was at Bambis Supermarket. Fortune found him at a restaurant around St Urael Church where he was sharing a whole chicken with a friend. The meal had cost him 207 Br previously, but he was paying 282 Br this time, on 26 August, 2013.
“The scarcity has only caused me to incur more expenses,” Addisu told Fortune.
The restaurant he was eating at had been unable to serve chicken for three days over the past two weeks. The scarcity, says Chef Meido Delil, led the restaurant to buy its supply from supermarkets at higher prices. Previously the restaurant got its chicken from farms at 69 Br; the supermarket price, he says, is around 135 br.
Zebra Grill, around Haya Hulet Mazoria, used to sell up to 60kgs of chicken a week, when the supplies were good. It had to suspend serving chicken for three days during the past week, according to Frehiwot Nadew, a supervisor at the Grill. Like Country Chicken, Zebra Grill has attempted to fill the gap by purchasing from supermarkets, according to Frehiwot.
The supermarket supply has, however, also been hit by the shortage. Sun City Supermarket, in business for the past three years, has not been supplying chicken for the past month, says Mirad Nesru, a supervisor. Dozens of customers visiting the store for chicken everyday return disappointed.
“Our normal order was 400kg [a week], but it shrank to 200kg when the scarcity came, before eventually drying out completely,” he told Fortune.
The supermarket has now stopped getting the 15 Br a kilo profit that it used to – 6,000 Br for 400kgs.
Fantu Supermarket used to sell a kilo of chicken for 149 Br, mostly to expatriate customers. It has now been a month since it, too, stopped meeting its customers’ demand.
Fanta Terefe, board chairman of the Poultry Farms Association, sees a number of problems leading to the shortage. Small businesses are closing because of the increased cost of chicken feed. He claims that in total 70pc of the running cost goes on feed. Mineral and vitamin imports are also taxed heavily, he says. There are also middle men through whom small businesses access the supermarkets.
“Those middlemen delay payments to the producer, a trend later followed by hotels and supermarkets. If they do not get the money soon, they will not start the next production. This led to the scarcity,” he said.
Chicken demand also goes down during fasting seasons and the rainy season, because of which supply also goes down.
A bigger problem, however, is that the bigger farms compete with the small businesses, instead of helping them, Fanta says.
“Rather than providing input for the small farms, the big ones compete with their small counterparts and push them out of the market,” he said.
The demand for chicken meat has also been growing over the years.
The Association, which has around 200 members, does not yet include Alema and ELFORA poultry farms – the two big farms owned by private investors – on its membership list. The scarcity will keep going until the end of September, after which the number of chickens coming to the market will increase and the cost of feed will go down, Fanta hopes.
The total poultry population at country level is estimated to be about 50.38 million, according to the Agricultural Sample Survey conducted by the Central Statistics Agency (CSA) in 2012. In this report, poultry includes cocks, cockerels, pullets, laying hens, non-laying hens and chicks.
Most of the poultry are chicks (38.9pc), followed by laying hens (32.77pc). Pullets are estimated to be about 4.86 million in the country. Cocks and cockerels are also estimated separately, and are 5.19 million and about 2.69 million, respectively. The others are non-laying hens that make up about three percent (1.53 million) of the total poultry population in the country.
Although the demand for chicken meat is growing, a 2010 data shows that the average chicken meat consumption in Ethiopia per individual is 2.85kg a year. This is very low compared to countries like Israel and England, where the consumption of meat per individual is 50kg and 25.5kg, respectively.
Alema Poultry Farm, which has been in the poultry business for the past 20 years, has decreased its production of chicken meat, from 100,000 to 40,000 for this summer. This is as a result of the experience it had last year. By then, the farm was unable to sell 100,000 chickens, due to the lower price of chicken meat. Moreover, the farm incurred high costs, as feeding chickens entails more food when they stay longer than expected. Last year, one chicken was sold for around 40 Br, which was less than the cost of production, claims Endale Amare, operations manager at the farm.
The low price offered by supermarkets and hotels last year, also led Abebaw Gessese, who runs a chicken farm in Modjo, 71kms southeast of Addis Abeba, to open a chicken restaurant for his products. It has been six months since he opened Cobb chicken in the Kazanchis area. He blames supermarkets and hotels for lowering the cost of chicken deliberately. He says he opened his own restaurant because he was unable to sell with the low price hotels and supermarkets were offering him. He added that they get 100 pc profits from the sale of chickens. To make the cost of chicken relatively cheaper than its current price, the government must organise small scale enterprises in every part of the city, says Abebaw.
In addition to Cobb Chicken Restaurant, which has a permanent chicken provider – Abebaw Gessesse Poultry Farm – Chicken Hut and Tommy International Chicken House, two well known chicken restaurants in the city, are serving chicken from their own poultry farms; Alema Poultry Farm in the case of Tommy International Chicken House.
Dawed Ibrahim, a researcher at the Agricultural Research Institute, sees a bigger problem in the absence of a breeder company in Ethiopia, who can supply grandparent chicken breeds. This leads to the dependence of small farms on big farms, who import the parent breed from abroad.
The Association has tried to communicate with foreign companies that breed the parent according to Fantu. “But those companies were little interested in the Ethiopian market, because of low local consumption.”
The exact number of chicken farms in Ethiopia is not clearly known; many go out of business before they are even accounted for says Fantu.
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