No Exemption from Pain

Ever wondered why your neighbourhood chicken shop does not have your favourite meat, or even if it does, is pricing it too high? Amit Saraogi, Managing Director of Kolkata-based ₹550 crore Anmol Feeds Pvt Ltd, a feed supplier to the poultry industry, says it is the complete breakdown of India’s chicken economy — hatcheries to feed suppliers to commercial farms to bulk suppliers to retailers — that has caused this crisis. The exemption it enjoys as part of the agriculture and allied sector has not helped either. The problem started with a rumour in February that the bird may spread cor0navirus. This hit demand during the month. By the time the lockdown was announced in March, “the Indian poultry industry had suffered a ₹15,000 crore loss as bulk suppliers abandoned the birds and farmers sold them for almost free,” says Saraogi. The demand is limping back but there is another problem. There are few birds, which means less demand for poultry feed, but Saraogi is struggling to meet even this demand as operations of his raw material suppliers - solvent companies that produce maize gluten, rice bran oil, etc — have been hit. The reason: they are not getting their raw material as soybean harvest, operations of rice millers, etc, have been hit due to labour shortage, administrative restrictions and shortage of trucks and truck drivers. The cash flow situation in the poultry industry is so bad that Saraogi says “it will take at least three months, after the lockdown gets over completely, for it to normalise”.

Not all industries that have goes to press. With central advisories themselves being revised often, and implementation patchy across states, even the agri-food sector which, along with pharmaceutical, healthcare and logistics, was the first to be exempted from the lockdown, has hardly resumed full-fledged operations.