Weather and diseases hit Philippine feed output

“Production went down because we went through a series of events that affected livestock and poultry production,” said Ric Pinca, a feed milling executive who represents the Philippine Feed Millers Association of the Philippines.

 

He said that typhoons and diseases had reduced pig and poultry production and slowed down demand for feeds which resulted in a decline in feed production by around 20% to 5.5 million tonnes. “Feed prices went down by as much as 20 percent to 25 percent last year,” said Pinca.

 

He said that soybean meal importation dropped to 1.1 million tonnes from 1.5 million tonnes, an indication that feeds production was also down last year.

 

High feed prices
The high price of local corn also reduced feed millers’ capacity to produce more feeds. “This prompted local feed millers to import feed wheat, which at one time early this year were coming in at a landed cost of P800 (€121) per tonne. Such was the attractiveness of the price of imported feed wheat over local corn that over one million tonnes of feed wheat came in from January to December this year,” said Pinca.

 

Executive Order 765 allowed duty-free importation of feed wheat, flour wheat and cement for six months to allow sectors to weather the effects of global recession. EO 765 expired in June.

 

Contracted feed wheat imports in 2009, according to industry estimates, reached 1.1 million tonnes, almost tenfold the volume of 112,000 tonnes in 2008. Corn imports in 2009, meanwhile, totalled 310,000 tonnes.