Continuing its plan to scan India’s broiler industry for its soy marketing efforts, USSEC India’s feed/meal program conducted another major feed technology workshop in Bangalore, India.  The feed technology workshop, “Knowing Your Soy Better,” targeted all leading broiler entrepreneurs and integrators from south India.  It also included five to six participants from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh with an objective to extend resources to neighboring countries in the Asian subcontinent.  About 90 top class broiler participants attended the workshop.
The southern region of India is more progressive in terms of the magnitude of the broiler industry (both quality and quantity).  With an effort to increase inclusions and also to sustain soy meal utilization in broiler feeds, USSEC India enlisted the help of USSEC consultant Jan van Eys to help update the Indian broiler industry of global developments.  Dr. van Eys also dealt with current aspects relating to soy in broiler feeds, demonstrated a few formulation techniques and differentiated types of soybean meal (including U.S meal) to assure that soybean meal is still the best bet for broiler nutrition.
In addition to executing the workshop, USSEC India’s feed program consultants (P. E. Vijay Anand, Pawan Kumar, Yadunandan, and R. Umakanth) adopted a unique feed/meal utilization data tracking system that enabled quantifying the event and using this data for planning the course of action.  The consultants also thought this system would help interim assessments/measurement of baseline figures on which future tactics can be built.

Assessment of the tracking system demonstrated that the participant profile connected to 7.54 million tons of broiler feed manufacture, which is 68-70 percent of total broiler feed milled in the country.  Analysis of about 22 key feed mill respondents showed that the soybean meal inclusions the industry used averaged 24.22 percent.  Applying this inclusion on the 7.54 million tons of feed, the actual soy meal usage by the workshop group stood at 1.82 million tons.  This is about 44 percent of annual soy usage in animal feeds estimated for FY14.  As a follow up to these strategic workshops, USSEC India’s feed program will work on a plan that will yield an incremental of 150,000 metric tons (MT) of soy usage by convincing the client group to add an extra 2 percent of soybean meal to existing inclusions.