For last few months Indian poultry industry is witnessing a complex situation. The Chicken rates are getting firmer with every passing day where as the egg rates are struggling to remain remunerative. It is surprising that farm gate price of egg is still low, despite the fact, that there is no resistance from the consumers who are still buying eggs at the rate of Rs. 6 per egg.
The question is why it is happening?
To get the answer we will have to go few decades back. In early 80s poultry farmers from across the India were in deep crisis. This was also the time when slowly but surely poultry farming was taking the shape of organized farming, consumption was consistent, availability was also adequate but the egg market was very volatile. It was totally in the hands of few traders. Rate used to be declared by traders and there was no provision of commitment to purchase the eggs from farmers. Open market was working as free for all influenced by few traders, without considering the production cost of eggs.
Because of this the Indian Poultry industry suffered an unusual series of crises, as the selling price had become lower than the production cost. Many of the poultry farmers shut down their farm operations as a result of heavy losses. Dr. B. V. Rao founder of V. H. Group was observing those things very closely and could not see the Indian poultry farmers in the clutches of mischievous persons who were procuring the eggs from farmers at their whims and fancies.
Seeing the miserable conditions of poultry farmers in India Dr. B. V. Rao and Ch. Jagapati Rao decided to act and act very fast. A group of farmers motivated by Dr. B. V. Rao and Ch. Jagapati Rao traveled across the country, organizing over 300 meetings with groups, individuals, and traders. Their objective was to unite poultry farmers from all over India and take control of their own destiny. In May 1982, NECC was formally registered as a trust under the Indian Societies Registration Act.
To day National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC) is an association of poultry farmers in India with a membership of more than 25,000 farmers. In the past three decades, NECC has played a significant role for the betterment of the poultry industry in general, and the egg industry in particular, through its various programmes like market intervention, price support operations, egg promotion campaigns, consumer education, market research, rural market development and liaisons with the government on vital issues concerning the industry.
NECC also took initiative to convince the farmers and traders to go for commitment to buy the eggs to create mutual trust between farmers and traders and also to avoid manipulation of rates by creating artificial gap between demand and supply.
Things were going well with farmers, traders and consumers as farmers were getting the remunerative price for their product, traders were getting reasonable commission for selling the eggs and consumers too were getting the eggs on affordable price.
But in last few years the concept of commitment started diluting and few big farmers and handful of opportunist traders started advocating for open market. Result of that the payment system which was well in place for all these years also started crumbling. Traders started exploiting the concept of open market and insisted for long credit and huge price cut on farm gate price suggested by NECC. The payment for farmers by traders started pilling up and a well thought process put up by Dr. B. V. Rao of commitment trading started crumbling.
TO day after close to three decades Indian Poultry Farmers are once again at the cross road and staring to loose heavily because of skyrocketing prices of raw material and sliding farm gate prices of eggs. Farmers are now once again looking after the person who can motivate thousands of farmers with one slogan that Dr. B. V. Rao had given "MY EGG- MY PRICE".
Hind Poultry still feels that Indian poultry farmers need not look for another such person and can still get the remunerative price of their eggs only by following the path shown by Dr. B. V. Rao.
The recently concluded meeting by South Zone coordination committee with commitment traders where it was mutually agreed up on to support and trade on NECC suggested price without deviation is a good step of taking away the open trading. Poultry Farmers too have the lager responsibility to make sure that their eggs are not available for open trading and on long credit. Farmers should also sit with NECC and Traders to create a mechanism where the system of selling eggs in open market and on credit is eliminated.
The recent meeting called by Mr. D. Sudhaker, Mr.K. Narayan Redyy, Mr. KSN Raju and Mr. G. Shekhar Reddy with commitment traders of Hyderabad is a step towards creating mutual trust between traders and farmers. The continuity of such meetings and implementation of commitment trading of eggs in Hyderabad will surely help poultry farmers to fulfill the dream of Dr. B. V. Rao where poultry farmers can say with pride: "MY EGG - MY PRICE".