The government is currently pursuing a policy to up the production of protein-rich food items that include meat, eggs, milk and fish. The activity comes soon after it sought to solve problems related to marketing of farm produce in its bid to check an anticipated escalation in their retail prices by possible opening of the retail trade sector to foreign companies.
The initiative has been taken at the highest level of government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is himself driving the effort to curb inflation — by ensuring an increase in the production of those items seen as major reasons for food inflation being stubbornly high in the recent months.
Only this Wednesday had the prime minister called for a high-level meeting to address the concerns related to push production of the protein-rich items. That got cancelled at the “last minute”, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Saturday. It was supposed to be attended by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and senior officials from the minstry of finance and department of animal husbandary, dairy and fisheries. The government’s intentions continue to be “quite clear” in this regard, the source told Business Standard. “You can soon expect some steps, like easing the import norms for milk and milk products.”
The production of protein-rich food items have been rising in India, but their demand is growing at a faster clip than output. The country’s dairy, fisheries and poultry sector is largely fragmented. It is dominated by small and marginal farmers, besides women who lack the resources to scale up their operation to meet the growing demand.
The domestic milk production in 2010-2011 is estimated to have risen by almost 3.2 per cent to 116.2 million tonnes, while production of eggs rose by around three per cent to 61.5 billion. As for the consumption of milk, unofficial estimates show a growth at around four to five per cent per annum. The percentage is roughly the same with the case of eggs.
The production of fish during the same period is estimated to have risen to around 8.28 million tonnes.
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Of this, 3.22 million tonnes were of the marine kind; 5.06 million tonnes were freshwater fish.
Officials say changing dietary habits of a majority of young population in the age group of 20 to 59 is adding to the pressure on ready-to-eat products like dairy items and meat products.
A data sourced from the National Sample Survey Organisation shows consumption of meat, fish and eggs has increased by 120 per cent in 1999-2000 over 1983 among upper-income group people and by 100 per cent in the lower-income group people.
Food is the biggest consumption category in India. The spending on it amounts to about 21 per cent of the country’s GDP.