Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to permit poultry farmers in the State to import maize to tide over the acute shortage of the commodity which is the main feed ingredient for the birds. He also suggested that the import duty may be waived as a special case.

The annual poultry feed requirement of the State is 1.38 million tonnes for broilers and 1.97 mt for layers, which is the largest in India followed by Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana and Punjab. The primary ingredient in poultry feed is maize, which accounts for 47 per cent of total poultry feed consumed.

Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are the major maize producing States. Unfortunately, recently maize crops were affected by ‘fall army worm,’ a pest that affected over 2.20 lakh hectares of maize crop out of the total 3.55 lakh hectares sown in Tamil Nadu in 2018-19. The pest also affected maize crops in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. Maize production was severely hampered leading to sky rocketing of prices and has put poultry farmers to great hardship in sourcing maize for poultry feed.

To control the price of maize and prevent the rise in production cost, selling cost and purchasing cost of eggs and poultry meat, maize needs to be imported, Palaniswami said in the letter to Modi.

The poultry farmers have requested permission to import maize themselves at zero per cent import duty. “I feel that in the present circumstances their request is justified,” Palaniswami said.

“I was informed that recently the Government of India had imported one lakh tonnes of maize to be distributed for whole of India. Though this imported stock may last for a few days, it may not address the gap between supply and demand. If the situation continues, it is bound to affect the production and selling of eggs and poultry meat. There is a monthly requirement of 2 lakh tonnes of Maize for poultry feed use in Tamil Nadu,” the letter said.

Tamil Nadu requires 10 lakh tonnes for the next five months.

State’s 11.73 crore poultry produced 4 lakh tonnes of meat in 2017-18. The State has been witnessing a cumulative growth percentage of 23.5 per cent in egg production and 30.53 per cent in poultry meat production from 2013-14 to 2017-18. Commercial poultry rearing is practised in the districts of Namakkal, Salem, Erode, Tiruppur and Coimbatore that have approximately 1,000 to 1,300 layer farms of various capacities that house about 3.5 to 4 crore layer birds.

The number of broiler birds reared is of the order of 50 crore live birds/annum. The Government of Tamil Nadu is also actively encouraging rearing of native chicken in a cluster based approach as a livelihood proposition which also addresses the nutritive requirements of the household. Tamil Nadu is the fourth largest producer of broilers and second largest egg producer in India, the letter said.

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