Vaishali Gupta, B.V.Sc. and A.H. Scholar (Final Year)
College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, DUVASU, Mathura (U.P.), India
Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, published “Les Prophéties,” a collection of nearly 1,000 prophetic and poetic quatrains in 1555.
One of them reads:
“From the vain enterprise honour and undue complaint,
Boats tossed about among the Latins, cold, hunger, waves,
Not far from the Tiber the land stained with blood,
And diverse plagues will be upon mankind.”
The Tiber, a river in Italy is said to symbolize the country and its history, according to Andrew Whalen for Newsweek. Italy is the country with the best health care facilities in the world yet the current situation for the country is pathetic. As this article is penned down, the world continues to face the wrath of “Novel Corona Virus-19” pandemic since the onset of the current year. According to the World Corona virus Disease (Covid-19) Dashboard of WHO, the population currently fighting the battle in the isolation wards with this disease is 5,596,550 while 353,373 people have lost their lives in the battlefield (globally, as of 6:45pm CEST, 28 May 2020). These smaller than dust sized particles have claimed not only lives, but also livelihoods of people. Migrant workers, landless laborers, truck drivers, milk vendors and food delivering agents have been affected in the past 5 months like never before. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised its global GDP growth estimate from 3.3% just 3 months ago to a contraction of 3%, something not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The World is slowly slinging towards another period of recession. COVID-19 crisis has caused an unprecedented collapse in economic activities over the last few weeks and the developed countries have been vanquished; the condition of developing nations like India is worrisome.
As the havoc of COVID-19 looms over, India seems to be on crossroads with its impecunious health services on one hand and the rickety chair of her economy on the other. Governments have swung into actions since the corona virus attack created an unprecedented situation and there have been a series of lockdowns since March 25, 2020. Economic activities after the lockdown declined by 40%, as only essential manufacturing and services are functioning. According to the ‘Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’, the lockdown may have a permanent impairment of a large section of the industry, which may lose the opportunity to come back to life again.
Dairy Industry-
Milk is India’s largest crop worth around Rs 6.5 lakh crore, much more than paddy and wheat put together. According to the Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics, DAHD&F, GOI, India is the largest producer of milk in the world with over 187.7 million tonnes of production and per capita availability of over 394 grams per day. The per capita availability of milk in India has increased from 176 grams per day in 1990-91 to 322 grams per day by 2014-15 surpassing the world average of 294 grams per day during 2013. Buffaloes account for 91.82 million tonnes followed by 51.26 million tonnes from cross bred/ exotic cows and 38.57 million tonnes from indigenous/ non descript cattle. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), India’s milk production of 187.7 million tonnes during 2018-19 is 22% of global milk production, which is 843 million tonnes. India’s milk production continues to grow and tops the milk output of all the European Union countries combined. Milk output in 2018 grew 5% over 2017 levels in India, while it was just around 1% in the European Union and the US. Indeed, the Asia-Pacific region has overtaken Europe as the world’s largest milk producer, with India alone producing one in every five glasses of milk. The daily milk consumption of the country is 50 crore litres with 20 crores being consumed at households and the rest diverted to sweet shops, restaurants, milk parlours and confectionaries etc. A survey conducted by ‘The Economic Times’ reported that over 50% of the distributed milk is handled by small-scale, non-organized operators, who can do little to increase their logistics and processing capacity. In addition, many of these small-scale operators do not have refrigeration equipment, which causes food safety issues.
Impact of COVID-19 on Dairy Industry-
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Indian dairy industry was going through a shortage of milk and lot of private dairy companies were planning to import skim milk powder (SMP) from countries such as New Zealand to make up for the shortfall. However, post lock down, the SMP prices had a pitfall of Rs 230/kg due to slackening global demand and the Rs 100,000 crore Indian dairy industry has suffered a considerable dip in demand. Business Times reported that Indian dairy industry has suffered a 25-30 per cent decline in demand ever since the nationwide lockdown since March 25, 2020. A large portion of the dip in demand has been attributed to out-of-home consumption, which contributes 15 per cent of the milk consumption, coming to a grinding halt. Restaurants, sweet shops and road-side eateries have shut down. With marriages, parties, social gatherings coming to a standstill, all the bulk buyers have started to evanesce. However, despite the demand dipping, milk procurement hasn’t come down in certain states as the dairy cooperatives are forced to adhere to the government notification of not meddling with the livelihood of farmers. This has led to surplus milk in many states. Cooperatives in Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra are buying extra milk just to help farmers. However, the same is not the case in few states viz. Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal where the not so well-off cooperatives are unable to buy as much and farmers are forced to throw milk. Further, some cooperatives have been buying surplus milk at a lower price. For instance, the Karnataka Milk Federation is known to be buying 7-8 lakh litres of additional milk per day but at a lower price i.e. the procurement cost has reduced from Rs 30-35 per litre to Rs 27 per litre. The COVID-19 crisis is driving milk businesses to the ground and consequently, the source of livelihood for thousands. The ongoing lockdown has hit this sector hard with sales and prices of milk dropping dramatically and a concomitant rise in the input costs, such as fodder.
Poultry Industry-
According to APEDA, Poultry is one of the fastest growing segments of the agricultural sector in India today. The production of eggs and broilers has been rising at a rate of 8 to 10 percent per annum. This makes India the fourth largest poultry producer in the world. At a per capita meat availability of 3.4 kg per annum, total broiler meat market size is over Rs. 85,000 crore in terms of retail price. The domestic table egg production for 2019 was estimated at 109 billion eggs translating to a per capita egg availability of 80 eggs per annum and market size of over Rs. 45,000 crore.
Impact of COVID-19 on Poultry Industry-
On May 16, 2019, Cision PR News projected Indian poultry market to reach INR 4,340 billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 16.2% during 2019-2024. Ironically, the COVID-19 crisis has painted a completely different picture. ICRA on April 24, 2020 declared the Q4 FY2020 to be worst quarter in recent times for Indian poultry industry. Wholesale prices of poultry and egg in the country have plunged by 15-30 per cent since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, in China, and poultry farmers blame it on fear mongering on social media platforms. Despite multipronged efforts from poultry players and the Ministry of Animal Husbandry to douse the rumors and to spread awareness about the safety of poultry meat consumption, the situation does not seem to have improved. Egg prices are down about 15 per cent year on year. As per data from National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC), egg prices in Ahmadabad are down by 14 per cent vis-a-vis February 2019, while it’s down by 13 per cent in Mumbai, 12 per cent in Chennai and 16 per cent in Warangal. Egg prices stood at Rs.358 for 100 units in Delhi, down from Rs.441 last year. The price of broiler chicken in Delhi has come down to Rs.78 per kg from Rs.86 in the third week of January 2020. In Andhra Pradesh, broiler prices have fallen by Rs.10 to Rs.87 per kg since the outbreak of Covid-19.
According to the All India Poultry Breeders Association (AIPBA), the coronavirus outbreak and the consequent lockdown have pushed the poultry sector in the country into a crisis with losses projected at Rs 22,500 crore beginning February 2020. It’s a double whammy for poultry farmers as birdfeed prices are up by 35-45 per cent compared to the last winter season. Poultry feed mainly consists of maize, bajra, soya extracts, groundnut extracts, rapeseed extracts, de oiled rice bran and rice bran. The prices of all these commodities have skyrocketed in the current financial year.
The dangers of working shoulder-to-shoulder in a meat processing plant have come to the forefront as the novel corona virus has exposed the fragility of the meat industry’s processing chain which is still in its infancy in India. The recent Covid-19 lockdown has impacted demand from QSR chains and restaurants and the demand recovery is likely to be gradual post relaxation in lockdown. Concomitantly, the demand for process meat is likely to remain muted in 2021 after witnessing 10-12% growth in the last three years.
Challenges-
Even as the world is dreading the effects of COVID-19 in every aspect, as per reports of The Economic Times, Poland will remain EU’s topmost poultry meat producer, similarly, the Brazilian poultry industry is set to grow at the rate of 5.1 per cent. On the other hand, the fourth largest poultry industry in the world seems to be overwhelmed by the situation. The current crisis reminds one of Mark Twain’s words “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” Statistics is only as good and as useful as it is presented and interpreted. And, more often than not, the devil is in the details. Only 6% of total poultry meat goes through value added processing, mainly in form of dressed broilers. The modern poultry processing sector includes 10-12 firms that together process about 12,000 tons of poultry meat annually, or 1-2% of consumption, and they mainly serve various fast foods, hotel and restaurant chains. The rest of poultry is sold as live birds through different retail outlets mainly in wet markets (traditional open markets).
This peripeteia has also been found true in the case of Indian dairy industry, where a paradigmatic shift has been seen. Livestock products have highly distributed production systems located far from consumer markets and they are highly perishable. Thus, they require more efficient marketing and processing system along their entire value chain-from production to consumption-to realize their higher value. Marketing and processing activities are even more critical in India since most livestock producers are small, resource poor, and often unable to establish their own linkages with markets, processors, and consumers. Even after decades of planned economic development, marketing of livestock and livestock products remains largely unorganized, traditional, and fragmented, with a few exceptions.
With about 85 percent of Indian farm households being small and marginal farmers and a significant part of the population being landless farm laborers, there is a lack of proper infrastructure as well as technology to preserve and upgrade their production. Basic knowledge regarding general preservation techniques for egg, milk and meat are still unknown to them leading to a huge wastage of these perishable items. Although, there is large production of perishables but still the post harvest potential remains untapped due to multiple reasons like high share of single commodity cold storage, high initial investment (for processing units and land), lack of basic enabling infrastructure (roads, water supply, power supply, drainage, etc.), lack of awareness for handling perishable produce and lapse of service either by the storage provider or the transporter leading to meager outputs. The refrigerated transport in the country is under-developed with less than 10,000 reefer vehicles and zero reefer containers for rail movement. Recent surveys have also indicated that although most of the cold storages facilitate transportation of commodities, 79 percent does not own any transportation. Due to fledgling cold supply chain, there is a heavy loss of food and other resources. As the international import laws for agricultural and processed food are becoming more stringent, the European Union (EU) has raised more notifications, issued more rejections and destroyed more consignments from India as compared to consignments from other developing countries such as Turkey, Brazil, China and Vietnam.
Way forward-
This is a matter of utter importance to understand that what we as a nation can do to cope up with this crisis. Looking deep into the logistics, it is evident that the farm activities in our country are more socio-economic and culture based with a few organized commercial setups. Today, the world is turning towards healthy lifestyle and India is no exception. As the buying capacity of consumers increase, so do their expectations from the producers. Recently, Managing Director of GCMMF (AMUL), Mr. R.S. Sodhi said in an interview that even though the out of home consumption is almost nil now, inclination of consumers towards value added and processed dairy products like paneer, ghee and cheese has increased. Although the roadside food stalls and restaurants have not seen sunshine in the past few months yet AMUL has witnessed an 80 per cent hike in the sale of paneer during the lockdown. There has been 15-50 per cent increase in the sale of cheese and tetra pack milk which is pasteurized and ensures consumers safety. As the market activities have been shut down, people have realized the importance of homemade food. It is anticipated that in the near future, the omnivore population would opt for processed egg and frozen meat pertaining to the safety of the products and “Mommy’s Fried Chicken” would be the new “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Processed products like packaged minced meat, meat kofta, meat patties, meat noodles would be in demand for households and penetrate more into the market rather than ‘Butter Tandoori Chicken Curry’ at any ‘Balwant Hotel’ as ‘eating safe’ would be preferred over ‘eating out’. Hence, the need of the hour is to strengthen the cold storage facilities, up gradation, value addition and safe marketing of the produce, in other words, reckoning of post harvest technology in Indian livestock and poultry.
Conclusion-
During 1918, there was influenza pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people, or one-third of the world’s population at the time, the 20th century also saw outbreaks of Ebola and Nipah virus and today the world is struggling with COVID-19 pandemic. History has proven that pandemics are inevitable and it is a matter of great certitude that the poor sections of society are always hit the hardest in any disaster or pandemic. This nationwide lockdown has given us an opportunity to ponder upon our policies and re-frame them to achieve a long term goal. Rome wasn’t built in a day, similarly the entire hurdles viz. poor infrastructure, lack of technology, unawareness, lack of funds, cannot be corrected in a single day. As the COVID-19 crisis has unraveled the gloomy picture of the other side of the coin, it is imperative that people earning their livelihood through agriculture and allied activities, who are losing their income from informal employment at this lockdown period, have to be provided with alternative avenues (cash transfers) till the economy bounces back. It has become pertinent to revolutionize the backbone of the industry at grass root level by providing the much needed impetus to the produce with better post harvest technologies. Hence, post Covid-19, innovations and improvisation in the chain from farm to fork is warranted for food safety, security and economic sustainability of India.
