Since June 2022, animal feed prices have declined by an average of 25 percent globally, in particular for non-ruminant livestock. Yet, the good tidings refuse to trickle into the local market, where prices of animal products have risen at an average of 35 percent during the same period, especially in urban consumption centers. At a time of skyrocketing inflation, is demand for animal protein – namely meat, and table eggs – unresponsive to the price signaling?
The story of broken governance, disorderly decision making, and regulatory nonchalance need not be repeated. The spark that was first lit by a global pandemic – a natural calamity beyond human control – was fanned for the following 18 months by asinine measures of price control and import tariffs, with a vengeful use of executive authority eventually bringing the entire house down through the total ban on (GMO) feed import. The indifference is further aggravated by the fact that the martial quarters – where true impetus for an agricultural revolution is felt today - never quite became the fan of bird meat, apparently raised in cages on steroids and growth hormones as if the pesticides and chemicals sprayed on crops are any safer.
The outcome? A total collapse of the feed value chain, where the import of the cheap protein – soybean – fell by an estimated 55 percent during FY23. At 0.8 million metric tons, Pakistan recorded its lowest quantum of soybean seed import since the industry shifted from imported oilcakes from India to import of raw material seeds from across the Atlantic some eight years ago. And although the solvent extraction industry has been quick to adjust, it is only and exclusively the ordinary consumer that has suffered the brunt of unaffordable protein.
In fact, nine months into the ban, it may be argued that the solvent extraction is possibly no worse off than it was a year earlier. During the worst days of restrictive import regime over the last year when import of pulses, lentils and even pharmaceuticals suffered, import of crude edible oil was facilitated – ‘marked’ essential - under the guidance and assent of the banking regulator. Import of various edible oil and their raw materials skyrocketed. During FY23, import volume of canola seed rose by 91 percent, soybean oil by 60 percent, and palm oil by 10 percent, raising the national inventory of edible oil to record level.
It is noteworthy that Pakistan recorded its highest import bill for soybean oil and canola seeds in its history in a year of deep controls on import. But more importantly, these imports coincided with a collapse in global vegetable oil markets, where prices fell by an average of 50 percent over the previous year across palm, soybean and rapeseed. Meanwhile, cooking oil and vanaspati prices in the local market have not adjusted
downwards, helped by perpetual threat of currency depreciation and inflation expectations gone nuts (or unanchored, in SBP language).
Meanwhile, gone are the days where the lower income segments used to look forward to the periodic downward adjustment in poultry prices, weather in the Eid ul Adha or Muharram seasons. In just three years, average poultry meat prices have tripled, putting bird meat at par with beef. Remarkably, lamb meat prices have risen at the slowest pace over the last three to five years.
The aristocracy must wonder among themselves: why don’t the plebs just eat mutton?
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