The Fiji Times Online reports that with the opening of the Vanua Poultry meat bird packaging plant in Siberia, Labasa there is a need to get the production and processing chain up and running.

Speaking at the recent Northern Division development board meeting in Labasa Lt-Col Moceica said this would only be possible if farmers met the demand of the packaging plant.

"We need more layer birds and hatcheries," he said.

"Currently there are only three suppliers of meat birds in Labasa and out of this three two are major market players.

"They even have their own chicken feed and sell them to Vanua Levu controlling the price of the feed according to transportation costs."

Lt-Col Moceica said they would strive at empowering local smallholder farmers economically to contribute to the meat bird processing chain and meet the market demand.

"Once we secure the production chain out to the market we also secure an entire volume of value chain.

"Once we have that we will create jobs and a value chain that is the ideal situation.

"Therefore, we need to encourage our people to enter into these poultry farming schemes and look for financiers to support them because we would like to see the value chain up and running."