Despite a record maize production last year, India’s poultry farmers are contending with higher retail prices of the poultry staple due to its increasing demand for ethanol blending. With a decline in sowing and deficient rainfall this year, experts say this is likely to get worse.

Maize was available to poultry farmers for Rs 12-14 per kg around the year 2019 but it now sells for Rs 27-28 per kg in the retail market. Since maize is the primary, starch-heavy food for all poultry and soymeal is the secondary food, farmers maintaining egg-layer and broiler poultry are both facing a crisis. They have to buy feed at these high prices and either pass on the cost to the consumer or bear the losses.

The contribution of maize towards ethanol blending increased from 0% in 2021-22 to around 37% in 2025-26. India’s move to blend 20% ethanol in petrol has been a subject of much discussion this past year after vehicle owners alleged damage due to the biofuel. Besides, when sugar prices surged recently, it led to debate on whether it was due to the Ethanol Blended Petrol programme.

Poultry farmers from Maharashtra spoke to ISignal of their losses, especially when a weak monsoon might mean lower maize and soybean production this year, and said that unless maize cultivation increases, it should not be diverted for ethanol. Eggs are a cheap source of protein, important to improve the nutritional status of Indians.

The E20 programme is targeted at reducing India’s import bill from fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel. But if the area under maize cultivation goes up at the expense of pulses and oilseeds and we have to import them, would that not cancel the E20 gains and therefore miss the point, asked agriculture expert R. Ramakumar, a faculty member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, currently on sabbatical.

ISignal wrote to the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairy for comment on how the government plans to protect the interests of poultry farmers in this context. We will update this report when we receive a response.

Ethanol can be blended into petrol to reduce the quantity of petrol required to run a vehicle, thus reducing dependency on imported, costly and polluting petroleum, as ISignal explained in May 2022. Ethanol is a principal biofuel naturally produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeasts or via petrochemical processes.

In India, it was initially primarily produced from sugarcane-based raw materials or certain types of heavy molasses, sugarcane juice/sugar/sugar syrup, followed by surplus rice available with the Food Corporation of India and maize. These are known as first generation biofuels.

Since the beginning of the EBP programme in 2003, average blending remained in the 0.1% to 1.5% range up to 2013-14, according to a roadmap for ethanol blending released by NITI Aayog in 2021.

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