“Dairy, Poultry & Aqua turn focal point for tremendous growth”
Cargill that set up its operations in India back in 1987, has businesses in refined oils, food ingredients, grain and oilseeds, cotton, animal nutrition, industrial specialties, and trade structured finance. The Animal Nutrition business of Cargill provides animal feed and premix and nutrition for aqua, dairy and poultry. It markets animal feed and premixes under the brands such as Provimi, Purina, Citura and Cargill. Kaushik
Sinha, Commercial Director, Cargill
India, shares his views on the status of animal nutrition industry in India with Agrospectrum. Edited excerpts;
What is the status of the animal nutrition industry in India?
The animal nutrition industry in India is seeing rapid growth and transformation, as the dairy, poultry and fisheries industries’ in India get increasingly organised and complement conventional agricultural output. The government and industry associations are collaborating to develop product quality and food safety standards. Animal feed manufacturers, suppliers, and exporters in India are hiring professional talent, adopting better management practices, to set the foundations for the next phase of growth. Indian and foreign organisations in the animal health and nutrition industry are playing a crucial role in this transformation by bringing in the best nutrition technology and farm management practices for dairy, poultry, and aqua farming industries in
India. Additionally, the industry is trying out innovative business models i.e. partnerships or integration options, that can bring higher efficiency to the value chain. At Cargill Animal Nutrition, we produce innovative solutions including on-farm expertise, value added feed products and nutrient analysis to support animal health and performance. Over the last decade, we have seen significant improvement in farm productivity and farmer’s income as a result of these initiatives. We believe the industry will play a leading role in the global food value chain.
How is Cargill contributing in compound feed for the dairy cattle sector?
Cargill is a global leader in nutrition technology. We use our expertise in nutrition technology to design the right solutions for Indian dairy cattle based on local farm management, feeding practices and weather conditions. Our dairy feed solutions are well known in India to provide the best results in animal health and milk productivity.
Only about 10 per cent of the farmers in India are using compound feed. Our biggest focus and contribution area is farmer education on the role of farm management and nutrition in increasing milk productivity. Each year, we provide training to 100,000 farmers through farm visits and organise farmer group meetings in the villages. We have adopted more than 500 farms where our dairy feed consultants spend significant time. A lot of dairy nutrition and farm management best practices gets passed on from these model farms to entire villages or blocks.
We also share our technical expertise, our proprietary tools for ingredient analysis and feed formulation and specialised micro-nutrition solutions with other dairy feed companies in India. This helps us multiply our farmer reach and also help raise the standards of the overall dairy feed industry in India.
What is the role of sustainability in animal feed?
The animal nutrition industry is playing a very critical role in sustainability. The dairy feed industry is already using food roughages remaining after harvesting of food grains (rice straw, wheat straw, jowar straw, etc.) and converting them into milk protein. There is scope for increasing usage of ingredients that are a by-product or processing waste from the food processing industry. These might be of high nutritional value and might otherwise be wasted for lack of application. India produces more than 40+ million metric tonnes (MTS) of feed every year across Dairy, Poultry and Aqua industries. If we are able to increase feed efficiency by 2.5 per cent, we would have saved a million MTS of food ingredients and the resources required to grow it. Animal feed is 20 per cent more efficient than it was 20 years back.
At Cargill, all our efforts support Cargill’s large-scale focus on sustainability. We embed sustainability in our business from product development onwards and continuously evaluate and bring in new ingredients into our feed formulations that optimises feed efficiency and maximizes economic returns for the producers.
What are the growth plans and strategies of the company in 2021-22?
As the global leader in the food and agriculture sector, we play a critical role in the food system. We are committed to ensure all new products and services from our premix and nutrition business include a sustainability advantage within the animal agriculture value chain. Starting right from the way we source agricultural materials, innovate new products and technologies, to ensuring animal wellbeing and human health, we believe the work we do is helping create a sustainable future. We are just getting started and have a long way to go! We see significant opportunities for growth and contribution in all three areas we operate in, i.e., Dairy, Poultry and Aqua. Dairy allows us to touch the lives and livelihood of the maximum number of farmers and consumers in India. Hence, we are most confident about this segment to grow, and it is primarily the focus of our strategic growth objectives.
What are the opportunities in the veterinary health industry?
We have a specialised dairy health team of 200 field representatives, who collaborate with 100 dairy field consultants each (veterinary doctors, para-vets, and AI technicians). Each of these field experts serve at least 50 farms. This way we are able to network and communicate with 10 lakh farmers in India. There is significant opportunity to increase market coverage through digital adoption and value chain partnerships. Preventive health segments like vaccines, nutrition supplements and immune boosters have big opportunities for growth. Economic value from preventive health of animals is being understood a lot better by farmers after the pandemic.
What is the impact of the current pandemic on the animal nutrition industry in India?
The pandemic posed a very difficult time for all of us, i.e., our employees, our customers, distribution partners and in general the communities we serve. Our industry’s collective effort during the pandemic was to minimise the impact to livelihood and business interests of small marginal farmers, distribution network partners and SMES serving this industry. India is a very resilient country and we believe that the country will bounce back to emerge stronger than before.
How would you envisage the future of the veterinary health industry in India?
We estimate the animal health industry to continue to grow at 6 per cent to 8 per cent in this decade. Producers will continue to see economic value in farm application of preventive health, immunity boosters and therapeutic solutions.
However, we might see some consolidation among veterinary health players in time to come. There are too many players operating in each market, and too many similar products on offer to customers. There is overcapacity in sales and marketing resources too. Market coverage and high cost to serve are the key challenges for the veterinary health industry in India. These challenges can be solved through technology adoption. We might see the emergence of digital platforms that can connect all players in the value chain. AI (Artificial Intelligence), interactive diagnostic tools can help doctors do farm diagnostics remotely in future. We certainly believe, digital tools and technology can help disrupt and transform the industry in a positive way.