Poultry Business in India

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The Poultry Business in India is a very old practice and this food industry is one of the important contributors to the economy of rural and semi-urban India. As per the reports, the Indian poultry industry has contributed around US $ 229million, to the gross national product and is witnessing steady growth till the current fiscal year. Further, the report also envisages a strong growth for the egg and poultry meat industry of India, both in urban and rural India, in the next two decades.

The current scenario of poultry business in India is encouraging because India ranks seventeenth in the world poultry production index. Further, India is the fifth largest producer of eggs and ninth largest producer of poultry meat amongst all the countries. The poultry industry of India produced over 34 billion of eggs and around 600,000 tons of poultry meat in the financial year 2004. The market research report of the poultry business in India found that egg consumption rate in India has grown at a much faster pace, than the consumption of poultry meat. Moreover, with the continual rise in purchasing power capacity, the rate of consumption is estimated to triple by the end of the year 2020.

The average per capita poultry meat consumption in India increased from 0.69 to 1.28 kg and the total egg consumption is estimated to touch 106 billion in 2020 from 34 billion in 2000. Furthermore, the poultry meat consumption is estimated to increase from 687 million kg to 1,674 million kg. Presently, the Poultry Business in India produces around 37 billion of eggs and 735,000 tonnes of poultry meat. The Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu cumulatively produces around 45 % of the India's egg production while the eastern and central parts of India account for about 20% of egg production. Further, the four southern states of India have per capita consumption of 57 eggs and 0.5 kg of broiler meat while the central and eastern states of India has per capita consumption of 18 eggs and 0.13 kg of broiler meat.

The structure of India's poultry industry is varied and small-scale producers account for the bulk of production while large-scale producers accounts for a growing share of output in some regions. The Poultry Business in India now employs around 1.6 million people among which around 80 % are directly employed, while the rest 20 % is engaged with its allied areas like in feed, pharmaceuticals, equipment, and other services as required by the poultry industry. Moreover, this sector also involves an additional workforce of around 1.6 million, primarily engaged with in marketing and sales of poultry products. India exports poultry products like table-eggs, meat, live birds, egg powder and frozen yolk. The total value of exports was around ` 5 billion at the end of the financial year 2000 and the numbers have risen steadily from there on.

Although, the Indian poultry industry is on a rise due to modern practice method of poultry farming but a major section of the industry still suffers from some bottlenecks, like the following -
  • Lack of proper basic infrastructure like storage facility, transport, cold storage chains
  • Fluctuations in the price of poultry products due to absence of proper storage facilities
  • Unorganized and inefficient marketing system
  • Interference of many market intermediaries
  • Availability of proper nutritious feed in absence of corn or maize, which constitutes the bulk of broiler feed
  • Lack of proper disease knowledge of the fowls

Last Updated on 19 May 2011