With our industry so dependent upon energy forecasts, spiralling oil prices are of great concern, as has been the rapid rise in the cost of feed. However, according to the latest Outlook Report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the forces that drive supply will eventually outweigh the forces that determine stronger demand for food and feed as well as for industrial demand, most notably biofuels production. So, feed prices are expected to fall from current peaks but remain higher than average.
Growth in poultry meat production is slowing. However, while in the short term higher feed and energy costs will likely apply a brake to rates of expansion, in the long term, because chickens convert feed into food more efficiently than its main competitors, demand in the more prosperous nations will swing further towards chicken meat.
Globally, increases in production are unlikely to return to former 3-4 percent per year levels, but will be in the 2.0-2.5 percent range, putting chicken meat output for this year between 75-76 million tonnes (mt). This may be optimistic if growth in production is cut to maintain profits.
Forecasts from the USA’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute indicate that world chicken meat production could approach 88mt by 2017, through an average annual increase of less than 2 percent. Poultry meat exports are forecast to reach a record
9.6mts. This is 4. 3 percent above last year’s estimated total of 9.2mt and compares with 8.5mt in 2006. Half of this year’s growth is expected from Asia.
Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza have hurt consumption levels. Worldwide average has shown only a slight increase from 11.1kg in 2005. Rapid rises in feed costs, which eventually must be passed on to consumers, will impact demand. For many of the poor, rises in retail prices will result in a reduction in the quantities of chicken bought. However, it is possible that
Over the past decade hen egg output (including hatching eggs) has grown by an average of just over 1.5mt or 3 percent a year. While the annual increase shows little movement in tonnage, in percentage terms the increases, averaging almost 3. 5 percent between 1996 and 2002, have slipped to around 2.5 percent a year and seem likely to contract further in the next decade.
Consumption per person and how it relates to human population growth is also important. Although average consumption in India might only rise by 0.1kg per person, when the change in population from 1.15 billion today to 1.41 billion in 2017 is considered, total chicken meat consumption would increase by a massive 700,000 tonnes from 2.4mt to around 3.1mt.
Of the 5726 million laying hens in 2006, 3546m or nearly 62 percent, were in Asia, representing a regional increase in market share of about 3 percent since 1996.
fourfold since 1970 and account for around a quarter of the global total.
Professor Hans-Wilhelm Windhorst, the International Egg Commission’s statistical analyst, said that global egg consumption would increase from 58.8mt in 2005 to 70.9mt in 2015. Aisa would account for 8mt or 67 percent of the extra demand.
Growth of commercial poultry feed output mirrored the less rapid expansion seen in poultry meat and egg output. Nevertheless, in 2007 our estimated total topped 310mt for the first time.
Growth in human population and GNI/person/year
World slaughterings/production
Poultry consumption - selected countries
World egg production
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