In Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury hits out at Centre over rising fodder prices

DMK member T R Baalu also supported Chowdhury on the issue he raised.

Chowdhury raised the issue days after The Indian Express reported that the annual rate of fodder inflation based on the all-India Wholesale Price Index (WPI) rose to 27.66 per cent in November this year. The fodder inflation stood at 27.31 per cent in October this year, and 0.68 per cent in November last year.

Not only fodder, feed prices also showed an upward trend. The inflation for ‘manufacture of prepared animal feeds’, a subgroup in the WPI, rose to 7.76 per cent in November this year, which was 3.38 per cent in October this year, and 14.86 per cent last year.

The ‘manufacture of prepared animal feeds’ subgroup includes five items — gola & similar cattle feed; rice bran extract; soya preparations excluding oil; cotton seed oil cake; and mustard oil cake — and has a weight of 0.35630 in the WPI. In this sub-group, the maximum inflation (36.28 per cent) was recorded by ‘rice bran extract and it was followed by ‘gola & similar cattle feed’ (11.59 per cent) and ‘cotton seed oil cake’ (6.47 per cent). Two other items, however, recorded a negative inflation — soya preparations excluding oil (-9.96 per cent) and mustard oil cake (-25.09 per cent).

The level of fodder inflation in November 2022 was – the highest since June 2013, when it hit an all-time high of 29.70 per cent.

The upward trends in fodder and feed inflation are in contrast to softening of the overall WPI inflation in recent months. The overall WPI inflation has seen a downward trend in recent months, falling to 5.85 per cent in November – the lowest in the last 21 months. Fodder inflation has been rising since December 2021, hovering over 20 per cent during the last 10 months.

Meanwhile, in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Parshottam Rupala said that no severe hardships to rural families whose livelihood are dependent on livestock have been reported by the states.

“Wholesale price index (WPI) data released by the Commerce and Industry Ministry showed that the index value for fodder has recorded at 225.7 in November 2022, registering an increase of 27.66 per cent over the same month last year (176.8). As such, no severe hardships to rural families whose livelihoods are dependent on livestock have reported by the states, although there is increase in the price of fodder,” Rupala said