The National Food Buffer Stock Company is encouraging poultry farmers to adopt a credit system that will enable the management of Senior High Schools across the country to patronize their products.

According to the buffer stock company, this arrangement will be suitable for the heads of various schools who might not have the cash to pay upfront pending the payment of their subvention by the government.

The CEO of the National Food Buffer Stock, Hanan Abdul- Wahab at a media briefing, said if the poultry farmers were to engage in credit sales with the Senior High Schools, their concerns of egg gluts would be addressed.

“If they can go into some form of arrangement with the headmasters and supply them with eggs so that as and when they receive their 30 percent [food subvention component] they would pay them, then there wouldn’t be this challenge.”

He indicated that his outfit currently operates under similar arrangements with the Senior High Schools across the country stating that “the 18 items that we supply and the non-perishable foods that we supply, we sometimes wait 60 or more days before we get paid”.

The call comes on the back of an earlier claim debunked by the buffer stock company that it was supplying imported mackerel as substitutes to eggs to these Senior High Schools to the detriment of poultry farmers.

The poultry farms had decried the lack of demand for their products in the last few months.

The farmers have attributed this to the increase in the cost of products because of the increase in the prices of feed and other production costs.

Schools, which were steady consumers of their products, have not been able to purchase eggs because of funding challenges.

Some had also argued that the schools were not purchasing their eggs because of substitution with mackerel by the National Food Buffer Stock Company, a claim the latter has vehemently denied indicating that mackerel has always been stable in its supply to Senior High Schools.