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Telangana Poultry farmers in distress over higher input cost
Highlights
Poultry India, 2015 is a 3 day event being held from 25th November to the 27th November 2015 at the HITEX International Exhibition Centre in Hyderabad.
Poultry India, 2015 is a 3 day event being held from 25th November to the 27th November 2015 at the HITEX International Exhibition Centre in Hyderabad.
The Poultry sector in Telangana is facing unprecedented crisis due to abnormal increase in feed prices and steep fall in egg and broiler prices,virtually forcing closure of poultry farms and thus depriving livelihood to large number of small and marginal poultry farmers.
Moreover, the rural demand for eggs, broiler and other poultry products are falling due to drought. Raw material cost largely feedstock for farmers has risen significantly over last six months and their realisations have not improved.
Retail prices of these products have not changed much, feedstock like soya meal and maize prices have risen by 25 percent. Feed prices are nearly 70 percent of the total cost in the sector.
Due to increase in the cost of animal feed the poultry farmers facing bad time and planning either to exist or cutting the cost of animal feed.
Six months ago ex-farm gate price of broilers were Rs.65/- each and now it was Rs.55/- each. However, there has been small increase in the farm gate price of eggs.
There is a shortage of soya meal and the cost has skyrocketed due to fall in soya bean crop, this being an important ingredient for animal feed.
In 2015, the egg production is estimated to increase by 7 percent to 74 million and the in the case of import of chicken legs from US, India lost one case at World Trade Organization and an appeal is planned.
The US consumers of Chicken breast, legs are export surplus there. However, if chicken legs are exported to India, it will further dampen the poultry sector. The government should make all the efforts to oppose the imports from US.
Recently, the State has requested the Central Government to take steps against permitting the import of chicken legs. Presently, India is in a position to export chicken legs as well as the breast part, if need be. Any move to allow import will have a crippling effect on the industry.
The State has also further emphasized that there were forces which were lobbying towards importing chicken legs from the US and urged that India should not let this happen and in turn, it should see the opportunities to increase export of chicken wings to the USA, which are in demand. As such imports are detrimental to the interests of domestic poultry industry.
The State recognised the fact still there is an open challenge as the per capita consumption of chicken meat is 2.4 kg and eggs is just 60 per person in India which is far away from world wide data figures of 11.2 kg meat and 155 eggs. Though the State produced 294.00 lakh MT of meat and 624.80 crores of eggs during 2014-15, the State is unable is to export meat and eggs due to import policies of Central Government.
Besides, key challenges faced the poultry industry in the state include logistic and quality issues related to transport production through the state is accounted for production of 20 percent of broilers and 30 percent of egg production. Moreover, unequal demand of poultry meat and eggs has resulted in unequal growth of industry.
The realisation pressures stem from the low entry barriers, which leads to oversupply situation. Further the marginal penetration of processed chicken (less than 5%) in overall poultry market limits the value-add potential and adds to the volatility of cash flows for the key players in the industry.
Most of poultry farmers use open buildings, which means no control of climate and high risks to potential poor bio-security. Another serious issue is inadequate cold storage facilities for storing meat and eggs.
The state is also severely lacking of human resources- shortage of technical personnel including veterinarians, researchers, and nutritionists and para –veterinarians in several critical areas where specific expertise knowledge is essential. Diseases like bird-flu create panic among people leading to lesser demand as well as slaughter of affected birds leading to economic losses. Adding to it, the increase in temperature which affects their health as well as lead to their death is also worrying factor among the poultry farmers.
However, the government coming to the rescue of the crisis ridden poultry industry in the State has extended subsidised power scheme and each poultry unit would get subsidy of Rs.2 per unit with effect from December1,2014, it covers the layer farms, broiler farms, hatcheries and poultry feed mills. Accordingly, the government budgetary provisions have been made in the budget estimates during 2015-16.
G.Rajendera Kumar
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