India: India's Poultry Market - A Snapshot of 2020-21

The past two years have been challenging for India’s poultry sector. With rumors running rampant linking poultry consumption to contagion with the COVID-19 virus, demand for poultry has been affected, dragging down prices. As consumer confidence with safety of poultry consumption began to recover towards the end of 2020 and into early 2021, the outbreak of avian influenza in February 2021 newly pummeled the poultry sector with steep drops in consumer demand with a concomitant decline in domestic poultry prices. At the same time, poultry feed (soybean meal) prices began rising in January and were 200 percent higher by mid-summer compared to 2020 prices. India’s poultry sector, notwithstanding the turbulent 2020-21 years, has been one of the fastest growing segments of Indian agriculture. At a time that agricultural production has been growing at a rate of one-two percent per annum, the production of eggs and broilers has risen by some estimates at eight to ten percent.