Manipur News

M. V. S. Prasad
Joint Director, PIB, Chennai
Poultry development has been a household activity in India. However, scientific poultry production in India gained momentum during the last four decades due to concerted efforts of the Government of India through policies, focused research and the initiatives taken by the private sector.
The poultry sector has emerged from entirely unorganized farming practice to commercial production system with state-of-the-art technological interventions. Poultry sector, besides providing direct or indirect employment to people, is also a potent tool for subsidiary income generation for many landless and marginal farmers. It also provides nutritional security especially to the rural poor.
Poultry sector in the country has shown steady progress over the years. Currently egg production is around 66.45 billion. The poultry meat production is estimated to be around 2.5 million tonnes. The current per capita availability of eggs is around 55 eggs per year. Exports of poultry products were around Rs.457.82 crore in 2011-12 as per the report of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).
Central Poultry Development Organizations
The Central Poultry Development Organisations (CPDOs) located at four regions viz. Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Mumbai and Hessarghatta have played a pivotal role in the implementation of the policies of the Government with respect to poultry. The mandate of these organizations has specially been reoriented to focus on improved indigenous birds, which lay on an average 180-200 eggs per annum and have vastly improved Feed Conversion Ratio in terms of feed consumption and weight gain. In these CPDOs, training is also imparted to the farmers to upgrade their technical skills. Besides, CPDO, Hessarghatta is also imparting trainers’ training to in-service personnel from within the country as well as overseas. Diversification with species other than chicken like ducks, turkey, guinea fowl and Japanese quail is also undertaken. The Central Poultry Performance Testing Centre (CPPTC), located at Gurgaon is entrusted with responsibility of testing the performance of layer and broiler varieties. This Centre gives valuable information relating to different genetic stock available in the country.
Novel Scheme
A novel scheme has been launched for the all round development of poultry sector. It has three components namely, ‘Assistance to State Poultry Farms’, ‘Rural Backyard Poultry Development’ and ‘Poultry Estates’.
Rural Backyard Poultry Development
This component is expected to cover beneficiaries from Below Poverty Line to mainly enable them to gain supplementary income and nutritional support. During 2012-13 (till Dec 2012) around Rs.21 crore has been released for assistance to nearly 95,000 BPL beneficiaries.
Assistance to State Poultry Farms
It aims at strengthening existing State poultry farms so as to enable them to provide inputs, mainly in terms of providing improved stocks suitable for rural backyard rearing. In 2012-13, seven farms have been assisted so far (partly) taking the total tally of assisted farms since inception to 233 (till Dec 2012).
Poultry Estates
Entrepreneurship skills are to be imparted through setting up of Poultry Estates. They are meant primarily for educated, unemployed youth and small farmers with some margin money for making a profitable venture out of various poultry related activities in a scientific and bio-secure cluster approach. Two poultry estates have been selected on pilot basis, one in Sikkim for broiler farming and another in Odisha for layer farming. Operations in the first stage will commence after infrastructure and input services are set-up, beneficiaries are selected and trained.
Poultry Venture Capital Fund
The main objective of the scheme is to encourage entrepreneurship skills of individuals in various poultry activities. The scheme is now being implemented from 2011-12 on capital subsidy mode. Under the scheme the components like hybrid layer and broiler poultry units, technology up-gradation, extension of component of breeding farms for low technology input birds to individuals are included. Establishing poultry breeding farms with low input technology birds, feed go-down, feed mill, feed analytical laboratories, marketing of poultry products (specialized transport vehicles, cool room storage facilities and retention sheds for birds etc), egg grading, packing and storage for export capacity are already part of the scheme. Under PVCF, 506 units have been covered in 2012-13.
(PIB Features.)
With inputs from the Ministry of Agriculture.

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