Poultry Farming in India

As the eggs and chicken meat are important and rich sources of protein, vitamins and minerals, Poultry has an important place in India. Poultry is an important source of income and employment to millions of farmers and other persons engaged in allied activities in the poultry industry and it also provides rich organic manure. Chicken is the most widely accepted meat in India. The prices of chicken meat are also lower than those of mutton or goat meat. Many Indian families have begun to accept eggs as a regular supplemental part of their vegetarian diet.

Poultry has made tremendous strides particularly in the private sector in the last 2-3 decades, with the result that India is now self-sufficient with regard to requirements of high quality breeding stocks, modern poultry equipment, availability of medicines and vaccines and technically qualified skilled manpower.

The annual growth rate is 8-10% in egg and 12-15% in the broiler industry. With the annual production of 33 billion eggs, India is the 5th world’s largest egg producing country. Per year it produces 530 million broilers. Poultry provides employment to about 1.5 million people.

The National Egg Coordination Committee projected a poultry plan for year 2015, keeping in view the target of 180 eggs and 9 kg chicken meat. Per capita annual consumption and considering an average growth of 10 % and 15% for egg and broiler industry respectively. For this purpose the country would need a capital investment of about Rs.148000 million.

The Central and State Governments Educational and Training Institutions, Farmers and The Private Sector poultry industry have contributed significantly for this achievement. In the Govt. Sector, the emphasis initially was on poultry training, breeding and health care. Post graduate programmes in Poultry Science were started at many centers. Programmes for selection and improvement of genetic stocks were taken up at Central and State Govt. farms.

Systems of poultry farming in India:
In India, both intensive and traditional systems of poultry farming are followed, but intensive system is rapidly increasing due to increasing land and other input costs. It is estimated that in India, about 60% of poultry meat and 56% of eggs are currently being produced in the intensive system. It is further estimated that there are about 60000 farms under Intensive system, while there are about 100000 small farms scattered in rural areas practicing more extensive production systems.

1. Poultry Marketing:
A farmers’ organization National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) -has collect information on supply and demand position of eggs on daily basis and declaring region-wise wholesale egg prices. This has helped to prevent undue exploitation of farmers. Agro-corpex India limited has been functioning in different states for direct trading of eggs of farmers.

2. Skilled Man-Power:
Technical manpower is available, as a result of various courses and training programmes organized by the Governments and Agricultural Universities. Some of them lack in providing hands-down-training some of the Institutes in the private sector.

Institutional Finance:
Credit facilities from commercial and cooperative banks and Regional Rural Banks and refinance facilities from NABARD during the last 2-3 decades have been provided to all aspects of poultry production and marketing. NABARD has also given valuable guidance in preparation, appraisal and monitoring of schemes. It has formulated several new innovative schemes and has been successful to obtain financial support from reputed International Financial Institutions.

Source: http://www.fao.org/