page_title: Agriculture in Benin
section_title: Cross-border market for poultry meat
hierarchical_section_title: Agriculture in Benin / Production / Livestock / Cross-border market for poultry meat
caption_attribution_description: English: carrots growing, water hose
context_page_description: Benin is predominantly a rural society, and agriculture in Benin supports more than 70% of the population. Agriculture contributes around 35% of the country's gross domestic product and 80% of export income. While the Government of Benin aims to diversify its agricultural production, Benin remains underdeveloped, and its economy is underpinned by subsistence agriculture. Approximately 93% of total agricultural production goes into food production. The proportion of the population living in poverty is about 35.2%, with more rural households in poverty than urban households. 36% of households depend solely upon agricultural production for income, and another 30% depend on crop production, livestock, or fishing for income.
  Cotton is the principal cash crop and accounts for 70% of export earnings. Cotton is mostly exported as bales with only 3% of total production processed locally, making the country heavily dependent on world cotton prices. Cashews, shea nuts and shea butter, pineapples, palm products, and some cocoa and coffee also are export crops.
context_section_description: Benin is a major importer of poultry meat and does not consume most of what is imported. Most goes to Nigeria. Poultry meat is scarce in Nigeria, and cost of poultry production is also high. Despite this, the Government of Nigeria (GON) maintains a ban on legal frozen poultry imports, primarily to protect local producers, whereas poultry meat is free for import in Benin. Benin's poultry sector is small, with domestic poultry meat production of about 13,000 tons in 2013, but a conservative estimate of poultry meat imports into Benin that year exceeded 160,000 tons (about 6,500 units of 40-foot containers) valued at more than US$450 million. (Some Benin importers indicated that poultry imports are actually as high as 300,000 tons annually). More than 85% of this is shipped to Benin for onward sales into Nigeria—entering the Nigerian market through informal cross-border trading activities (as do rice, intermediate and consumer-oriented food, and agricultural products of all type).
  Poultry meat importers in Benin want the GON to maintain Nigeria's import ban on poultry meat in order for them to continue to serve the huge and increasing Nigerian poultry meat consumers. However, some poultry meat importers in Benin also own poultry operations, mostly for egg production and some poultry meat processing and packaging. Many fish importers are also shifting to poultry meat imports using their existing cold storage facilities, and others are expanding their storage facilities particularly around the Benin-Nigeria border, to meet Nigeria's increasing demand for imported poultry products at the border. Poultry farmers produce mostly eggs for domestic consumption. For poultry meat, they are limited more by the country's market size than cost of production inputs. Although they still have easy and adequate supplies of corn, soybeans, and other feed ingredients, they fear the cost of production is rising due mainly to increasing human consumption of these products (particularly corn and soybeans). Generally, Benin's poultry farmers want the GON to remove its import ban on poultry meat in order for them to gain free access into Nigeria's massive market. One Benin farm is very integrated and stocks about 50,000 birds (chickens), produces other poultry types as well, compounds its own feeds, has its own poultry processing and packaging facilities, and supplies poultry meat to one of the country's large supermarkets. The farm also runs an aquaculture farm and owns a newly established poultry farm that has the capacity to hold over 100,000 birds. Currently, the new farm is stocking about 10,000 birds, and the firm seeks partners and markets, especially in Nigeria, to optimize its operations.
caption: Carrot field in Grand-Popo
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