KUALA TERENGGANU, Jan 12 — The Terengganu state government has identified 120 hectares of land in the Setiu district to be developed as a hub for layer poultry farming to tackle its egg supply shortage and avoid dependence on imported food sources.
State Agriculture, Food Industry, Plantation, Commodity and Rural Development Committee chairman Dr Azman Ibrahim said discussions had been held with several local investors, adding that each of them had shown interest in the initiative.
“The state government welcomes investors to open layer farms in Setiu to meet the state’s ever-increasing needs every year.
“So far we have held discussions with two or three companies, including from Melaka that own broiler farms in Terengganu,” he said after inspecting egg supply distribution at the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) operations centre in Chendering here, today.
Dr Azman said the project will start middle of this year based on the same model or mechanism used in other agricultural projects in the state.
He said the state government would provide the location and basic amenities as well as other assistance to attract investors, adding that this project would create job opportunities and generate the local community’s economy
“We set a target to have our own source of eggs within one or two years from now. We have done the same for broiler farms and so far, Terengganu has 138 broiler farms and can meet 65 per cent of the state’s needs,” he added.
Meanwhile, he said the state government did not intend to import eggs from other countries including Thailand to meet market demand as they are more expensive with poor quality due to the time it takes for the eggs to arrive at sales outlets.
He said beginning middle of last month, the state Fama managed to bring in more than 340,000 eggs from other states to meet the needs of about three million of its people. — Bernama
