Egg and chicken question still

8220;What can I do? My name is not even featured in the government list. I don8217;t have any other source of income. I had a small farm, that8217;s also shut now,8221; says Mullah.

Mullah is among the 80 per cent poultry farmers who have not been able to restart business since last year. For most of the small-time farmers with just 10,000-20,000 birds, poultry was the main source of income.

Last February, there were 70 poultry farms in Navapur with a capacity of 12 lakh layer birds. Of these, 16 have restarted with their savings and the little compensation they received.

This time last year, Navapur, whose railway station straddles Gujarat and Maharashtra was supplying over eight lakh eggs per day. Now, down to supplying just about 1.5 lakh eggs a day, most farmers are edgy about restarting their business.

WHILE Mullah can8217;t even apply for compensation, others are hoping the government will bail them out.

The government had culled about 1.5 lakh birds from February 18 last year. All these birds were compensated for immediately.

8220;But we were not paid anything for the bird mortality before the declaration came. They hadn8217;t promised us at that time, but later on, a six-member cabinet committee was formed for compensation and rehabilitation of Navapur farmers. We made a presentation before the committee that our birds were dying at such rate that we had to bury them or cull them ourselves even before the government made any declaration. 70 per cent of our birds died by February 18, we asked them to pay us at an average rate for 40 weeks,8221; says Ghulam Vohra, president of the Navapur Poultry Farmers Association.

8220;There has been no rehabilitation programme from the government to help us rebuild our businesses,8221; adds Vohra. While the government says it is doing its best to help the farmers, it is obviously falling short. It has not compensated for eggs and medicines that were destroyed last year.

8220;We have given them immediate compensation for the birds that were killed, at the rate of Rs 40 per bird. They are demanding that the government pay for the birds that died earlier. But those we have not seen, so it would be wrong to do so,8221; says Bijay Kumar, commissioner, Animal Husbandry Department, Maharashtra.

Vohra puts the loss incurred by farmers at Rs 15-20 crore. 8220;The birds which we lost before the government declared bird flu amounted to 75 per cent of the flock and we have not been compensated for that.8221;

The government says they are considering the compensating for the eggs destroyed, as an exception and not a policy. 8220;Nowhere in the world have the destroyed eggs been compensated. But as the amount is small but significant for the farmers, we have sent a proposal to the Central government,8221; Kumar added.

Politics over birds

The Government of India in October 2006 granted permission to the farmers in Navapur to restart their business. From May to September, government officials kept 50 chicks each in every farm in Navapur to ensure that the farms had been completely disinfected. The blood samples collected from these chicks were sent to the high-security Animal Disease Laboratory, Bhopal, which came out negative.

The green signal meant business could start again in most areas. But some villagers in the area where Mullah8217;s farm lies8212;between Pangran and Raingan villages8212;don8217;t want poultry farms to get into action again.

On January 5 this year, Khalil Bardolia took a truck full of pullet bird to his Khalil Poultry Farm in Pangran but villagers stopped him from putting the birds in the sheds. 8220;I had to run away from there. They just would not allow us to restart. They were just a few villagers who seemed to be politically motivated,8221; says Bardolia.

On the same day, Arif Baduda could not start his poultry farm in Raingan area for the same reason. 8220;The sarpanch of Raingan Shibu Narsi said that they had given permission to two farms to restart on the condition that they could keep the area clean.

8220;As far as law and order situation is concerned there is no problem anymore. They have been given permissions to restart their farms,8221; said Navapur collector Jayant Gaikwad. There are 70 poultry farm owners in Navapur city, Pangran, Jainya, Wakipada, Raingan area. Of these 70, 16 have started business all over again.

The minimum size of a poultry farm is 9,000 birds plus 3,000 chicks. Most of the farmers began business by getting the pullet birds 16 week old from bigger hatcheries. Says Vohra: 8220;Earlier, everyone would rear their own chicks, after getting day-old chicks from Saguna. It would work out cheaper as we would make our own feed, have raw material etc. But all of that was destroyed along with the culling of the birds. So thought this was an expensive option, we had to spend less time between the chick being bought by us and the egg production.8221; Ventakeshwara Hatcheries Limited has supplied pullet birds reared at Nashik, Pune and Aklujj area.

Meanwhile, the farm hands are a listless lot. Most of them are now left guarding empty farms; others have migrated to Surat or are working at the neighbouring sugarcane farms. The bigger farmers have got their farms back on track.

8220;I must say that after the entire cleanup the productivity has really gone up,8221; says Arsulbhai Timol, owner of National Poultry Farm. Their farms are giving them a produce like never before, they have little competition and the prices due to the huge demand has been good. 8220;We are currently getting Rs 196 per hundred birds. This is like never before. The maximum money were got was Rs 150 to 155 per hundred birds,8221; says Vohra.But the smaller farmers are yet to recover from last year8217;s bird hit.