The Hindu Business Line : Poultry sector asked to go in for forward integration

INDIA'S poultry sector should pay greater attention to forward integrating production process to escape their produce being commoditised in the market place, according to Mr O.P. Singh, Chief Executive Officer of the Pune-based Venkateshwara Hatcheries Pvt Ltd.

"We succeeded greatly in achieving backward integration through hatchery/breed development and feed formulation since the commercial poultry boom in the 1970s, but we have not done much on poultry processing, storage, packaging and more importantly branding," he said.

Mr Singh was speaking on the theme `quality poultry production to meet global competition' at the 7th national poultry expo here on Friday.

He said in the case of broiler, the lack of product differentiation and value addition has robbed of consumer preference for the chicken as a food model.

In the present market scenario, the loss of consumer loyalty would mean distress to the farmers growing chicken. This underlines the need for the poultry promoters to evolve a new model of distribution to ensure better price realisation.

He said Tamil Nadu broiler producers, who made an impressive mark in promoting contract poultry (integrated poultry farms) as an effective business model, would stand for a good chance to make a niche in the international broiler market.

Mr B. Soundararajan, Managing Director of Suguna Poultry Farm Ltd, which has emerged as one of the leading integrated broiler producers in the country, has said that the introduction of the contract poultry farming by his company first in 1990 had sought to cut by half the number of costs layers which would otherwise normally associated with the conventional poultry farming.

Making a presentation on the contract broiler farming model adopted by his company, he said the contract poultry farming managed to free the small farmers from the worries of production/market planning of the poultry products.

The per capita chicken consumption, which remained at 400 gm in 1990, has gone up to 1,600 gm (all-India ) and in the case of Tamil Nadu, the per capita chicken consumption has gone to 4.5 kg. Mr Soundararajan said the broiler sector would be churning out a production value of Rs 18,000 crore from the present Rs 7,500 crore in 2010 when the per capita consumption of chicken would hit 3,600 gm from the present 1,600 gm.

Today more than 90 per cent of the poultry farming in Tamil Nadu has come under the contract farming concept and the future is for this sector only, he said.