New Delhi: Since time immemorial, animal products like eggs, milk, meat have played an important part in the socio-economic life of India. These products are a rich source of high-quality animal products such as milk, meat and eggs. In fact it is no surprise that with the country having a large population and with a recent growth in income of consumers, India’s demand for food has increased. However, at the same time it also needs to stressed that that a lot of focus is laid on basic foods while demand for livestock products is not really well understood. Undeniable, it can be said that there has been a rapid rise in demand for livestock products in India. Within this group, milk and milk products hold a dominant share. The total milk production in India is 230.58 million tonnes (MT) during 2022-23. India ranks first in world in terms of total milk production.
Among other animal products, total egg production in India is 138.38 billion numbers in 2022-23. India ranks third in the world in total egg production. The egg production has risen by 6.77% as compared to 2021-22 while the per capita availability of egg is 101 eggs per annum. The total egg production from commercial poultry is 118.16 billion numbers and backyard poultry are 20.20 billion numbers contributing 85.4% and 14.6% of total egg production respectively. At the same time, India ranks eighth in world in terms of total meat production with total meat production being 9.77million tonnes in 2022-23. The meat production has increased by 5.13%. The meat production from poultry is 4.995 MT contributing about 51.14% of total production.
Consumers changing habits
Now since the 1990s as liberalization took place, people’s buying capacity also increased. It was expected that income growth would lead to changes in structure of demand for food commodities, but it has been seen that India’s food consumption continues to be focussed on basic foods chiefly foods of plant origin. Now this is important to understand the dynamics of animal product consumption for policy formulation as increased consumption of animal products is likely to present challenges to India’s policymakers like food security, industrial structural adjustments and resource reallocation and environment protection among other factors.
Concern of policy makers
The issue was recently raised in Parliament. It was asked that due to increasing incomes people and changing eating habits, was demand for animal products like meat, milk and eggs rising in comparison to plant-based foods and resultantly animal husbandry had become more profitable than crop farming. The minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and DairyingShri Parshottam Rupala said as per the working group on ‘Demand and Supply Projections for the Year 2033’ of NITI Aayog, animal products like milk, eggs and other non-vegetarian products like fish, egg and demand for meat was estimated to increase by 33%, 47%, 31% respectively in the year 2021-22 as compared to the year 2011-12.
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