By Divya Kumar Gulati, Chairman, CLFMA of India:
“The RBI’s assessment of inflation rising to 5.2%, alongside a widening trade deficit and heightened volatility in global crude prices, underscores the cost pressures that continue to affect India’s agri-food ecosystem. For the livestock and poultry sector, any sustained increase in energy, transportation and input costs can have a direct bearing on feed costs, at a time when farmers and producers are already operating in a highly cost-sensitive environment.
The impact also extends across the food manufacturing value chain, where higher logistics, processing, packaging and energy costs can raise the overall cost of production. Continued volatility in global commodity markets and the uncertain outlook for the West Asia region add another layer of pressure for businesses that depend on predictable input and supply-chain costs.
With maize, soybean meal and other feed ingredients already facing price and availability pressures, sustained energy inflation could further raise the cost of poultry, dairy and aquaculture production. As festive demand picks up, ensuring adequate domestic availability of feed raw materials will be important to prevent input-cost pressures from cascading into consumer prices.
The focus should therefore remain on strengthening feed security and keeping supply chains efficient, so that external global volatility does not impact farmers or the affordability of animal protein for consumers.”