NEW DELHI: India’s growth in output of milk, eggs and meat, key protein items, has slowed during 2023-24 compared to the previous two fiscal years, although absolute total production has increased, pointing to lower productivity amid rising demand.
Demand for protein-based food has risen steadily and both rural and urban households now spend a larger share of their monthly expenditure on high-value items, such as milk and milk products, eggs, meat and fish, according to the government’s Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022-23.
This means India, the world’s largest milk and second biggest eggs producer, needs to ramp up output per cattle to meet growing demand and keep prices stable, analysts said.
India’s milk output jumped by 3.78% to 239.30 million tonnes during 2023-24, according to the government’s Basic Animal Husbandry Statistics 2024 released on Tuesday.
The total production in the previous fiscal year was 230.58 million tonnes. Still, the rate of milk output in 2023-24 increased at a slower pace compared to 2022-23 (3.83%) and 2021-22 (5.77%).
The country produced 142.77 billion pieces of eggs during 2023-24, compared to 138.38 pieces in the previous year.
However, the growth in egg output, at 3.17%, was lower than 6.77% in 2022-23.
The pace of growth of meat output has also slowed, the latest data show. Meat production in the country is estimated to be 10.25 million tonnes during 2023-24, compared to 9.77 million tonnes in the previous year.
Though meat output rose in absolute terms, the growth in production, at 4.95%, was lower than the 5.13% achieved in 2022-23.
India’s wool output has remained flattish at 33.69 million kgs, while the pace of increase in output slowed from about 2.22% in 2022-23 to 0.22% in 2023-24, according to the data.
The livestock and poultry sector, a key component of the farm economy, was battered by the pandemic. Poultry was the hardest hit.
Recovery from the pandemic-induced slump was then stymied by a deadly lumpy skin disease epidemic, a key reason for slowing productivity or yield per cattle. The outbreak is estimated to have killed or maimed up to 300000 cattle, according to some estimates.
“Milch productivity was impacted. However, the milk sector has recovered from these shocks. More organised-sector production is needed for higher productivity,” said RG Chandramogan, chairman and managing director of Hatsun Agro Product Ltd.
Demand and inflation in food have become more “structural”, meaning these factors are tilted towards protein items, including plant-based proteins, experts said.
“Our results confirm that there is the dominant impact of demand factors in determining protein inflation,” said Gopakumar KU of the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, who published a recent study of food-inflation patterns in the Indian Economic Review.