India Poised For Growth In Poultry Exports

Inaugurating the 20th world poultry congress here, Gowda assured that the government would do everything possible to provide the infrastructure needed for increasing exports through the national rural infrastructure funds besides facilitating greater investment in cold storage, transportation and marketing.

Stating that India was currently the fifth largest egg producer in the world, he said several of the state governments had included eggs in the mid-day meal programme introduced in schools.

The national institute of nutrition had recommended that the per capita annual availability of eggs should be increased from the present 33 to 180, he said. An increase of one egg per capita would help generate 25,000 additional jobs, he added.

 

Stressing on the need to step up research on the diversification of feed and improving efficiency of use of feed grains, he said the organised poultry industry was making major investments in the genetic improvement of poultry and disease control. The challenge lay in evolving the appropriate technology relevant to the small producers for enhancing productivity, output and income, Gowda said. Millions of farmers in remote areas should have access to better technology and marketing, he added.

He traced most cases of malnutrition in the country to inadequate purchasing power. In our strategy for improving both nutrition and liveli-hood security, we would like to promote ecologically sustainable mixed farming on a large scale, he said.

As poultry is an efficient convertor of low-grade feed ingredients into high-grade proteins, advances in poultry production would stimulate the increased output maize and other feed ingredients, he said.