According to The New Indian Express, as per normative calculation, there is a demand of around 64 lakh eggs per day in the State. The domestic production of egg is about 45 lakh including 34 lakh from 61 commercial layer farms.

Under the supplementary nutrition programme, around 15 lakh eggs are required for the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and 13 lakh for mid-day meal programme on daily basis.

The gap in the demand and supply is met by procuring around 20 lakh eggs from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, official sources said adding the annual per capita availability of egg in Odisha is 56 as against the national average of 55.

Considering this requirement, the State Government has planned to increase egg production through commercial farming and backyard poultry. The Government has announced capital subsidy of 40 per cent to attract more private investment in this sector.

The capital investment subsidy will be raised to 50 per cent for women, scheduled category entrepreneurs and graduates in agriculture and allied disciplines, the sources said.

Issues confronting poultry farming were discussed at a high level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra here recently. It was decided at the meeting that the issues relating to reimbursement of VAT and entry tax for layers poultry farms will be dealt expeditiously.

Since poultry has been recognised as an agricultural activity, the meeting decided to treat it at par with agriculture with regard to land use and power tariff matters.

The Chief Secretary asked the Revenue and Disaster Management department to issue necessary instructions clarifying that conversion of agricultural land to homestead land may not be necessary for setting up layer poultry farms.

The Energy department was asked to take up the tariff related matter with the Government.

Meanwhile, the Panchayati Raj and the Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (F&ARD) departments have developed a model plan to rope in women self help groups (WSHGs) to enhance egg production to 100 laks per day in coming years.

The F&ARD department has been directed to promote establishment of maize processing units in the State to produce poultry feed.

These activities will generate employment opportunities and provide permanent livelihood support to farmers.