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Poultry fanning in India is quite old. At present, more than three million people are directly or indirectly employed in poultry farming. It produced around 2.4 million tonnes of chicken meat in 2010-11. Between the 1970 and 2011, the annual per capita availability of eggs has quadrupled from 10 to 45, while the corresponding increase in chicken meat has been faster from, 145 grains to 1.6 kgs. India produces more than 59.84 billion eggs per year [India 2012, p. 109).
Poultry sector besides employment generation and subsidiary income increase provides nutritional security especially to the rural poor. Further, landless labourers derive more than 50 per cent of their income from livestock, especially poultry.
While India’s share of world trade in the poultry and poultry production continues to be very small in the last decade the value of such exports has increased from 11 crore in 1990-91 to Rs. 350 crore in 2010-11. Exports of products such as live poultry, eggs, hatching eggs, frozen eggs, egg powder, and poultry meat to countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South West Asia, Japan, Denmark, Poland, LISA, and Angola augurs well for industry. The value of output from poultry sector is nearly Rs. 20,000 crore.
In India, there are over 260 million hens in the country which laid down about 30 billion eggs during 2010-11. The largest number of poultry population is in Andhra Pradesh followed by Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Haryana. Most of the important poultry farms are being developed around almost all the important urban centres like Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Nagpur, Shimla, Bhubaneshwar, Ajmer, Chandigarh, and Bhopal.
Uninterrupted supplies of feed as well as avian influenza are critical for the continued robust growth of the poultry sector. The first outbreak of avian influenza occurred in India in the state of Maharashtra in the Nandurbar district on 18th Feb. 2006. The Government of India initiated immediate steps to control and contain the outbreak.
The Central Poultry Development Organisation has been playing a pivotal role in the implementation of the policies of the Government with respect to poultry as a tool for alleviating nutritional hunger and palliating the impecuniosities of the resource-poor farmers, especially the women. The mandate of the Central Poultry Development Organisation has been specifically revised, by restructuring all poultry units of this Department to focus on improved indigenous birds, which lay on an average 180-200 eggs per annum and have a vastly improved F CR ratio in terms of feed consumption and weight gain. The Central Poultry Development Organisations have been entrusted with the responsibility of producing excellent germplasm in the form of day-old chicks and hatching eggs of these varieties like Nierbheek, Hitkari, Vanaraja, Shyama, Cari, Chabro, etc. Besides, these organisations are also playing a crucial role in analysing feed samples.
These Organisations, besides conducting the activities stated above, also work for scaling-up of diversification of other avian species like Ducks/Turkeys/Guinea fowl/Japanese Quail, and upgrading of Training Unit into International Tropical Avian Management Institutes in which privatepublic partnership is envisaged. Presently these Organisations are also supporting and hand-holding the Centrally-sponsored Schemes related to assistance to state poultry farms.
A new Centrally-sponsored scheme called Assistance to State Poultry, is being implemented during the Tenth Plan where one time assistance is provided to suitably strengthen the farms in terms of hatching, brooding, and rearing of birds with provision for feed mill and their quality monitoring and in-house disease diagnostic facilities.
A new scheme, Dairy/Poultry Venture Capital Fund, has been launched during the 2004-05, wherein there is a provision to grant subsidy on interest payment. The nodal agency for the implementation of this scheme is NABARD through nationalised commercial bank. In 2005—06, a total of 49 poultry units involving
2.17 crore was approved.