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Kerala State Poultry Development Corporation

BRIEF PROFILE

Kerala Poultry Development Corporation Ltd was registered in 1989 as a fully owned Govt. of Kerala under taking, primarily to provide increased momentum and thrust to propel the poultry industry of the state. The Corporation has been providing impetus for the promotion and development of Poultry sector in the state of Kerala. Modernizing the poultry in Kerala is the major thrust of the corporate strategy of Kerala State Poultry Development Corporation Ltd. Poultry is emerging as the fastest growing sub sector of agriculture contributing sizeable out put to the State economy.

Poultry Development in the Country has taken a quantum leap in the last three decades and is growing by 15% to 70% of the total production is from the commercial poultry. When the national scenario shows a quantum leap in Poultry Production, the situation in our state is showing a negative trend with a declining growth of 15.4%. So this is contrary to the scenario in national level. Though lots of attempts were made by the Government through both state plans and decentralized plans, we could not attain the expected goal of self sufficiency in egg production During 1970’s Kerala was an exporter of eggs to other parts of the country with Chengannur and Kottarakkara railway station famous for centers of rail transport of eggs to other states. So we were producing more than demand of the state during those periods, but the situation now is that we are importing about 300 Crores of Hen Eggs and 40 Cores of Duck Eggs every year and the drain of around 650 Crores to the neighboring states.

The per-capita availability of eggs has slide down from 76 to 36 in 2003. The poultry population has come down to 110 Lakhs in 2003. The same in with duck population which declined to Rs.6.6 Lakhs from 11.2 Lakhs. As per the ICMR recommendations the average per capita egg consumption should be 180 in adults and 90 in children. Taking into consideration that children accounts only 20% of the total population, the required eggs for Kerala is 472 Crores and our present production is only 120 Crores. The shortage is 360 Crores. At present the requirement is met by importing eggs from other states. This indicates that there is potential market for an excess production of 360 Crores in our state. For the poorest of the poor and the landless, the major issues are food security and risk spreading through subsidiary income, which are to be addressed besides targeted egg production. It is a well-known fact that a fairly significant proportion of landless and marginal farmers make out their living from poultry and other small ruminants. Backyard poultry requiring hardly any infrastructure setup is a potent tool for upliftment of the poorest of poor. Besides subsidiary income generation, rural backyard poultry provides nutrition supplementation in the form of valuable animal protein and empowers women. It has a very positive impact to improve the socio economic factors of the socio economically backward people.

It may also be mentioned that groups of small rural producers cater to the needs of consumers also have a specific preference for colored birds and brown shelled eggs both of which are mostly produced in the rural backyard poultry. Thus there is a need to take up specific rural backyard poultry production programs to meet the requirements of the rural consumers while constituting a source of subsistence income as a subsidiary occupation by taking up colored bird units ranging from 10-20 birds per family in their backyards. Such units require very little hand feeding and can give a fairly handsome return with bare minimum night shelter.

Commercial Poultry Production in Kerala is not feasible owing to various reasons and hence the targeted goal of doubling the egg production in 2 years and making self-sufficiency in 5 years can not be achieved by large scale Commercial production. The only alternative to this is strengthening of Backyard Poultry Production, which was once Kerala’s own method of bulk and quality egg production at bare minimum cost.
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