Today, the second Friday of October, is World Egg Day, with the theme "Protein that powers and protects". Bangladesh will mark it nationally on 13 October. The farmers who supply the country's cheapest protein say that for much of the year they sell eggs for less than it costs to produce them.
According to the livestock ministry and department, Bangladesh produced 14.93 billion eggs in 2016-17 and 25.09 billion in 2025-26, a rise of more than 68 percent in a decade, or more than 60 million a day. Small farms supply 80 percent. The Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association (BPIA) counts more than 40,000 layer farms, registered and unregistered, of which 20,464 are registered.
An egg now costs Tk 10.50 or more to produce on the farm, but farmers are selling below that. In Dhaka, a brown farm egg sells for Tk 13 or more, Tk 2.50 above the cost of production. Hafizur Rahman, a poultry farmer in Bogura Sadar, said a 50 kg bag of feed has risen by up to Tk 150 in 20 to 25 days, to as much as Tk 3,675. A 50 kg bag of bran has gone from Tk 1,300 to Tk 1,800, and maize from Tk 25 to Tk 37 a kilogram. "We have to sell at whatever price the market sets," he said.
BPIA president Mosharaf Hossain Chowdhury said farmers are blamed for rising prices, but middlemen between farm and market take Tk 2 or more on every egg. He wants the government to help build a supply chain that lets farmers bring eggs straight to market, and to act on feed prices, since feed is more than half the cost of poultry farming.
Mashiur Rahman, convener of the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Central Council (BPICC), said the government sets a maximum price when eggs get dear but never a minimum price when they slump, so producers do not get a fair return. From June to September farmers sold eggs at Tk 8 to 9. In protest there were human chains, road blockades and egg-smashing demonstrations in Rajshahi, Gazipur, Pabna, Kishoreganj, Cumilla, Narsingdi, Dhaka, Kushtia and Mymensingh.
People in the trade say a farmer cannot stop production when prices fall, because a flock raised to lay cannot simply be paused. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) standard is at least 104 eggs per person a year; the Department of Livestock Services says Bangladesh now supplies more than 140 per person, and the government and industry aim for 200 by 2030.
Photo: Rüdiger Wölk / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Source: The Daily Observer
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