Quantum jump in per capita consumption of milk, meat and eggs

Quantum jump in per capita consumption of milk, meat and eggs
Dr.T.P.Sethumadhavan
Increasing per capita consumption of milk increases the domestic demand of milk. As domestic consumption of milk increases, as a result of wide demand supply gap scarcity arises. Even though consumption of food grains has decreased during the year 2007-2008, animal protein sources like milk, meat and eggs shows a positive trend. This emphasizes the need for increasing domestic production to meet the ever-increasing need for animal protein sources. As India is growing richer, Indians are growing hungrier. Annual per capita cereal and pulses availability has declined from 457 gm and 40.16 gm respectively in 1995 and to 391 gm and 31.5 gm respectively in 2005.

The per capita daily cereal availability is lower than 393.1 gm of cereal and almost 47 percent of the 67.2 gm of pulses available in 1960 to the Indian population. But Indians are eating more meat and eggs. Per capita egg consumption is expected to close at 43 eggs in 2007-08 while broiler meat at 2 kg. It is expected to reach 50 eggs per year and 2.3 kg per year of broiler meat by 2010. Per capita milk consumption in 2007-08 is about 238 gm/day. It is expected to reach 262 gm/day by 2010. Inorder to increase more quantity of animal protein sources to meet the increasing needs of the population; sufficient quantity of grains like maize will be required at a reasonable price. Moreover rate of agricultural growth fell from 5 percent in the mid 1980s to less than 2 percent in the last 5 years. India is facing a demand- supply mismatch in the case of food grains despite having produced a good quantity of wheat and rice last year.