A decade after its inception, the country’s first women’s poultry cooperative stares at a bleak future as the central Indian rural initiative is facing administrative apathy even as a private firm is giving it tough competition by undercutting.
The Kesla Women’s Broiler Poultry Producers’ Cooperative, many fear, may collapse given the extent to which IB Group has pegged down the price of broiler chicken. The competitor firm has fixed the broiler chicken price at Rs 40 per kg to wholesellers, while the cooperative, with 900 women-members from 34 hamlets in and around tribal-dense Suktawa village, says it cannot climb down from its present Rs 45 per kg. This, despite the the cooperative having gained fame with its innovative Suktawa chicken brand in the local market.
Curiously, the state government, which has a significant contribution to this initiative through World Bank-assisted District Poverty Initiative Project, has suggested no solution to the issue. The players in the cooperative business are clueless. “We cannot supply our chickens at our new competitors price of Rs 40 per kg to our wholesalers. They are reluctant to buy chicken from us,” Saroj Bai, chairperson of the MP Women Poultry Producers Company Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Kesla Cooperative Society, told Business Standard.
“IB Group,” she says, “is dumping them at Rs 40 per kg by outsourcing them from their hatchery based at Rajnandgaon (Chhattisgarh). We cannot compete at this price. Even the bird flu (in 2006) did not hit our business this hard. We do not oppose competition but it should be a healthy competition.” Kesla poultry society has brought down its chicken prices to Rs 45 per kg. “We cannot lower prices further.”
The state agriculture department says it is concerned about the issue, but concedes that it has no immediate solution. Can’t the government impose entry tax on chicken outsourced from other states? “No,” says R Parashuram, additional chief secretary. “We cannot restrict any businessmen in an open economy by imposing entry tax.”
The MP Women Poultry Producers Company Pvt Ltd has capacity of placing nearly 600,000 chickens across state with its six cooperatives, but Kesla is the biggest one with approximately 200,000 capacity. Each member of cooperative has her backyard poultry that can rear 300-750 birds. A member takes batches of broiler chicks for 30-45 days duration from cooperative and rear them. The average earning after this period is between Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,500 per batch (Rs 10,000-20,000 a year). The male members of the families supply them in nearby markets of Suktawa, Betul, Multai, Bhopal, Itarsi, Hoshangabad, Panchmarhi and Pipariya.
The fallout of the “unhealthy” competition is already showing. “We are placing hardly 100,000 chickens these days,” says H K Deka, managing director of MP Women Poultry Producers Company Pvt Ltd. “Poultry farmers in Chhindwara, Parasia and Hoshangabad area selling their farms, finding it impossible to sustain.”
More From This Section
On its part, the cooperative has got in touch with the IB Group by speaking to its managing director Bahadur Ali. “We urged him not to crash prices and ditch poor tribal people. But to no avail,” notes Deka. “We want a room for few months. We are in process of setting our own hatchery. We hope we will get some support from the government.”
The IB Group MD did not respond to Business Standard. The 1985-founded company posted a sales of Rs 9.36 crore as on 31 March 2010 against Rs 8.04 crore during FY 2008-09 and net profit of Rs 1.41 crore.