Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Edouard Djogbénou
Published on 2024-04-19 07:04:04
The Minister of Agriculture, Gaston Dossouhoui, discussed on Thursday, April 17th, during a press briefing the external and internal causes of the high cost of corn.
Minister Gaston Dossouhoui held a press conference on Thursday, April 17, 2024. The high cost of corn was at the center of the authority’s concerns. According to him, corn, a cereal widely consumed in Benin, was producing around 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 tons three years ago. However, during this current campaign, Benin has produced around 1,800,000 tons despite the difficulties.
The national needs for human and animal consumption are around 1,000,000 tons. Therefore, there is a gap, a surplus that can lead to many transactions. But if corn is expensive today, there are certainly internal reasons that explain it, justifies Gaston Dossouhoui.
The first reason is that, thanks to the decisions taken to ban the importation of poultry meat products, breeders started to make strategic reserves to feed the chicken batteries. Traders, sensing this favorable situation, engage in speculation.
The other external reasons, according to the minister, are that this speculation has now spread throughout the Sahel region, where corn consumption is important. Furthermore, the minister explains that Nigeria, with its massive poultry production, cannot do without Benin’s corn. When we see these pressures from both sides, there is a problem of supply and demand.
To address the situation, the minister explains that the government felt obligated to protect domestic production. Unfortunately, he laments, not everyone understood this.
The second option for the government to tackle the situation is to encourage more production. In this regard, the government has worked to make high-yielding seeds and hybrid seeds available to double production.
According to Minister Gaston Dossouhoui, Benin cannot change the weather “but we can change our habits to be resilient.”
Read the original article(French) on Benin Web TV
