The domestic poultry industry has appealed to the central government to extend a revival and restoration package in the wake of increasing soya and maize prices that are essential poultry feed ingredients. A delegation of the National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) consisting of poultry farmers, breeders and other stakeholders across the country met agriculture minister Sharad Pawar recently, requseting to extend the package. The proposed revival scheme will provide immediate succour to the farmers, who are battling an unprecedented increase in the prices of ingredients of poultry feed.
In the last two years, the prices of soya meal and maize have been increasing due to forward trading, exports, speculation and hoarding by traders. ?`This hoarding has caused in anticipation a substantial increase in the volume of exports of these commodities,? industry players said. The price of maize has increased from R1,170 per quintal in March 2011 to R1,630 in April 2013 and soya meal prices have touched R3,900 per quintal from R1,821 an year ago.
?The prices of soya meal in international markets have been steadily falling and it is available for imports at a landed cost price of R28,000 per tonne in India. But, in contrast, prices in the domestic market have increased from R28,000 per tonne to R40,000 per tonne in the last 15 days,? said an NECC official. As a result of such a steep increase in costs and poor remunerative farm gate prices, farmers have incurred heavy losses, with the working capital cost of almost 80% of farmers and even breeding farms and hatcheries totally wiped out.
A revival package is being called following the artificial price escalation for feed ingredients. Some of the demands put forth in the restoration package include a moratorium for a period of one year on repayment of interest and installments towards term loans availed by the poultry farmers, interest subvention of 6% for a period of two to three years, rescheduling the outstanding term loans to provide more time for liquidation of the loans, and the sanction of additional working capital loans to meet the increase in the cost of production.
Further, the industry has also asked for allocation of 2 lakh tonne of damaged wheat and paddy for exclusive use of poultry farmers at a subsidised price of 50% of the minimum support price (MSP) and waiver of customs duty on import of soya meal for captive consumption for a period of one year.
According to some reports, India is the world’s fifth largest egg producer and the 18th largest producer of broilers. The four southern states ? Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu ? account for about 45 % of the total egg production with a per capita consumption of 57 eggs and 0.5 kg of broiler meat. The eastern and central regions of India account for about 20% of egg production, with a per capita consumption of 18 eggs and 0.13 kg of broiler meat. While there are opportunities for improving growth in the industry, smaller units are finding it difficult to survive because of high feed and transport costs, expensive vaccines and veterinary care services and poor availability of credit.