'Rs. 2.10 an egg not sufficient'

Export of raw materials such as chicken feed needed for poultry farming should be banned, says R. Nallathambi, State president of Tamil Nadu Poultry Farmers Association.

He told The Hindu that the price of essential feeds such as maize(Rs. 12,200 a tonne), soya (Rs. 19,000 to Rs. 20,000 a tonne), groundnut cake (Rs. 18,000 a tonne), sunflower cake (Rs. 13,500 a tonne), deoiled rice bran (Rs. 8,250 a tonne) and fish meal (Rs. 21,000 a tonne) has increased the cost of production of an egg to Rs. 2.35.

While the National Egg Coordination Committee had fixed the price of egg at Rs. 2.10 on Friday, farmers would get only Rs. 1.90 as the difference of 20 paise would go for handling and transport charges, he said.

“Drop in price during summer is expected and understood by farmers but such a heavy loss will affect the sustenance of the poultry industry,” he added.

But for maize, that is largely grown in Tamil Nadu, other raw materials were brought from Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra, he said and added that middlemen and export played a key role in the rise in price of chicken feed.

Middlemen most benefited as they bought the materials from farmers at low prices and sold them to poultry farmers at a high price, he said.

If an online trade facility was introduced, poultry farmers could avoid such middlemen, he added. Though the poultry industry of Namakkal had the most benefited by the present government's introduction of egg under the nutritious noon meal scheme, it still had many demands.

Now the industry supplied 3.5 crore eggs every week for the scheme. Poultry being an agriculture allied industry, free and uninterrupted electricity and water should be provided to the farmers, he said. The 1,100 poultry farms in the state (including nearly 850 in Namakkal) provide direct and indirect jobs to more than five lakh people but the recent years have seen a dearth of skilled and unskilled labour.

Involvement of persons employed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for work in the poultry farms would help meet this shortage. The farms could provide employment throughout the year with a wage of Rs. 125 for female and Rs. 200 for male labourers.

He suggested that the poultry farmers and government could jointly work out strategies to pay wages on a 50-50 basis, instead of the government bearing it.