The Indian poultry industry, comprising production and consumption of eggs and poultry meat, has fallen far short of global averages and baffled industry watchers. Initially from the 1970s when Dr. Rao put this industry on structured lines, there was rapid growth, but for the past three decades, progress has fallen short of expectations. Many hypotheses have been put forward to explain this. My analysis examines the driving factors and comes up with some not-so-obvious conclusions and remedies.

PPP and Vegetarianism

Indian per capita purchasing power parity rose from $1173 to 6092 (reference 1) over the 1991-2016 period of 25 years – a straight 16.8% per annum growth rate. But poultry consumption rose from a per capita of 3 kilograms to just under 6 (reference 2), registering a growth of only 4% per annum in this period. The growth of the table egg market has likewise been lack lustre. Has India reached a saturation level of poultry consumption at these levels of PPP? Were this true, it would be borne out by examining the consumption levels of other countries at these income levels. When we do so, we find India remains a laggard.

On the other hand, the oft-trotted claim that Indian figures for PPP versus poultry consumption are not comparable with other countries because of the largely vegetarian nature of her population also needs close examination.

According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are vegetarians, while another 9% consume eggs. The remaining 60% qualify as non-vegetarians who consume meat and eggs. Other surveys cited by FAO and USDA estimate 20%–42% of the Indian population as being vegetarian. These surveys indicate that even Indians who do eat meat, do so infrequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly, although the reasons are mainly cultural and partly economic. Thirty per cent of 1.3 billion (400 million) is still a huge population, comparable to the combined population of the Philippines, Vietnam, Angola, the Republic of Congo and Myanmar, (each of which consumes large quantities of other meats as well, unlike India) and has PPP per capita income comparable to India with per capita poultry consumption ranging between 11 and 22 kg per annum (reference 3).

Reference 3

Total population 370 mn. Ref: per capita poultry meat consumption -Helgi Library (2011 data); PPP – CIA.

Why This Slow Growth?

Having demonstrated with these statistics that neither low purchasing power nor the prevalence of vegetarianism is sufficient to explain this low 4% per annum growth in consumption of poultry in India, we need to discover what factors could have conspired to do so. India does not import poultry. Therefore, supply-side factors such as availability alone may hold the answer. The abundance of good breeding stock, availability of feed ingredients at global prices and acquisition of global markets (to ensure rapid growth) are secondary factors affecting the supply side. These are manageable by the government of the day if it perceives the role of these secondaries and is motivated to tackle them.

In my view, there are only two limiting factors to the growth of poultry in India. These are

• a disconnect from global trade and
• non-adoption of GM maize and soybean which are the main ingredients of poultry feed.

Both these factors have helped create a manageable monopoly for breeding stock and deterrence of competition from global players that would have led to improved efficiencies and, consequently to employment and growth.