Dr Mandeep Singh Azad
India’s poultry industry represents a major success story. While agricultural production has been rising at the rate around 2 percent per annum over the past two to three decades, poultry production has been rising at the rate of around 8 percent per annum, with an annual turnover of US$ 7 500 million.India has 1.23 billion people and the number is growing every year. The focus is on “Development” meaning Good Food, Better Health & Living conditions to everyone. People spend more money on food when they earn more. Healthy food at attractive price will be the issue in focus. Eggs and chicken are accepted by all communities and are available at the most reasonable prices. Within a span of 25 years, the egg production has gone up to 70 billion from few millions and the broiler production has gone to 3.8 million tonne from nowhere. Poultry is the most organized sector in animal agriculture, worth rupees one lakh crores. The growth is 6-8% in layers and 10-12% in broilers per year against the growth of agriculture as a whole which is around 2.5%.India is the third-largest egg producer after China and USA and the fourth-largest chicken producer after China, Brazil and USA. The per capita eggs consumption has gone up from 30 to 68 and the chicken from 400 gm to 2.5 kg. Human nutritionists recommend 180 eggs and 10 kg chicken per year. Most of the countries consume over 240 eggs and 20 kg of chicken. There is scope for enhancing the production. Production is getting more organized and move ahead of consumption resulting in optimum prices and with minimum profits.
Poultry farmers of Jammu are up in great danger from the big market players who in past few years have corrupted system and had taken over whole market industry of Jammu and Kashmir. Some companies whose owners are not permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir State are running Contract Farming in Poultry Section, which is a component of Agriculture sector in Jammu division, particularly in the districts of Kathua, Samba, Jammu and Udhampur. These owners are doing Contract Farming. State Govt had imposed Rs 8 per kg as an entry fee on live chickens brought from outside the State to safe guard the interest of poor farmers and make them at par with the farmers of the other states. But merely putting a tax of 8 Rs is not doing them any harm because they have capacity of 1 lac -2 lac birds how would a farmer of 2000-5000 birds capacity will compete with them. These big players in market have made it tough for local poor poultry farmers to compete in terms of rates as the farms occupied by them are local people farms and they have kept the owner as only watchmen and laborers. These companies have increased day old chick rates to Rs 40 and grown bird rate is 75-80 which for them is profitable as they save money from day old chicks sale, feed sale and all practices but a poor poultry farmers with a capacity of 1000-2000 can never compete with them .This has resulted in poor farmers closing their poultry sheds and shifting to other businesses.The Valley-based poultry farmers are demanding imposition of large amount of tax on the adult birds imported into Jammu and Kashmir to bring competitiveness in the market. Birds being imported from high tech farms of Punjab are sold at cheap rates in the state and hence affecting the local industry.
About 85 per cent of Kashmiris eat non-vegetarian food. Official statistics say Jammu and Kashmir annually consumes a whopping 51,000 tonnes of mutton worth Rs.12.06 billion (over Rs.1,200 crore), of which 21,000 tonnes is imported from outside.”The 21,000 tonnes is in addition to 30,000 tonnes of mutton produced locally and costing Rs.7.02 billion (Rs.702 crore) which also goes into the local consumption each year. Chicks, broilers, layers and eggs amounting to Rs.1.2 billion are imported each year for local consumption. Nearly 90 percent of the poultry farmers of the Border belt of the Punjab are dependent on the supply to J and K, as there is huge demand of poultry products throughout the year in the state. Punjab supply over half a million eggs and 40,000 to 50,000 chickens per day to meet the demand within the J and K state that cost nearly 50 million rupees per day. The Punjab poultry industry, which was ranked first in India in 1984, has dropped to the seventh due to what farmers’ term as the anti-poultry attitude of the government .Poultry farmers claim that they are experiencing huge losses due to natural calamities and with the presence of mega companies. The local poultry association is afraid that the recently introduced ‘Contract Poultry Farming’ by the mega companies would damage poultry industry in Punjab irrevocably. Punjab is the first state in the country to introduce contract farming at the Government level. The main objective of this programme is to prepare farmers to cultivate quality and marketable produce based on the demand and supply chain. Farmers blame big players for the so-called loss to local poultry producers. This can happen to Jammu poultry industry also if Government wont come forward to stop this poultry mafia coming from different states and leading huge losses to poor small scale farmers.
The poultry sector offers opportunities in various poultry products (from eggs as well as from poultry meat). Global Poultry meat consumption is projected for 47percent increase in 2022 compared to the average of 2003-13 which shows that the market is growing very fast. More than 50 percent of India’s current population is below the age of 25. Coupled with the slow but gradual shift from vegetarianism to non vegetarianism, people in this age group are high potential consumers. India is one of the countries in the world which can guarantee non-GMO chicken to the customers in European Union. However, the various challenges, threats and weaknesses of the sector including: diseases, high feed costs, poor marketing infrastructure, regional imbalances in production, among others should be diligently addressed and the strengths of the sector well exploited so as to harness the opportunities. Otherwise, the poultry sector offers a bright future. A future right in our hands to shape. But the biggest threat to small scale poultry industry is from the bigger players which are indirectly taking away food from the hands of poor farmers. Government and policy makers should come forward to save the poor farmers.
(The writer is scientist in SKUAST-Jammu)
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