Why did the chicken cross the border? Assessing farm performance of broiler production in Ghana and Germany

Craig Chibanda, Petra Thobe, Mohamad Isam Almadani, Claus Deblitz and Stephen Awuni

No 333506, Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project

Abstract: Ghana has experienced an explosion in the consumption of chicken meat in the last two decades. However, local production has failed to keep up with the growing demand for poultry meat. Consequently, Ghana is highly dependent on frozen chicken imports as it imports an estimated 65 % of its total poultry meat supply. Ghana’s dependency on chicken imports is a subject of significant debate. One of the questions in the debate is: “How is it possible that EU countries are able to export frozen chicken meat to Ghana at such low prices and still make a profit?”. Some studies explain that EU countries like Germany are able to export frozen chicken cuts to African countries at low prices because EU consumers prefer to consume chicken breasts, therefore, other parts are either exported or processed into pet food. However, this explanation does not provide insights into why a significant amount of frozen whole chickens are also exported to West Africa at lower prices than the locally produced ones. Therefore, this means that there are other factors that contribute to the low-cost of frozen chicken meat exports from the EU. In this context, this study investigates whether the farm performance of German conventional broiler farms contributes to the low prices of German frozen chicken exports to Ghana. The typical farm approach was used to construct and quantify typical conventional broiler farms in Ghana and Germany. The approach entails the construction of empirically grounded farm data sets through the use of semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Our preliminary results show that the typical German conventional broiler farm is technically more efficient in comparison to the Ghanaian farms. The production costs in Germany are significantly lower compared to the Ghanaian farms. The results also show that all typical conventional broiler farms in Ghana and Germany are profitable in the short-term, which considers only cash costs.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-des and nep-int
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pugtwp:333506

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