A group of Gozitan farmers and livestock breeders risk being forced to shut down their operations due to increasing expenses and an uneven playing field.
Six farmers spoke on how the number of people working in the sector has diminished drastically, and that those who remain in business only do so because they have invested too much money to afford to pack it in now.
“Farming is in my blood, my family is made up of livestock breeders. It has always been my wish to continue the family tradition but I wanted to do it properly, aided by technology and maintaining modern standards,” one young chicken farmer said.
Encouraged by what he described as “promises that the farming sector would be given the attention it so desperately needed by the authorities”, he decided to take up a funding scheme that supports investment in cost-effective and environmentally efficient systems, in order to set up what he believed would be a worthy enterprise.
“Like most funding schemes, this one does not finance 100 per cent of the capital outlay required, so I – and many others like me – had to take out a substantial bank loan that runs into hundreds of thousands. We were all led to believe that the…
