Market Trends of Automated Poultry Farm Industry
Increasing Costs of Labor and Productivity
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), agricultural labor in the percentage of the workforce declined from 28% in 2018 to 26.5% across the globe in 2020. Across the world, a huge decline in the workforce is observed due to various reasons such as lack of skilled labor, aging of farmers, and young farmers finding farming an unattractive profession, thus encouraging trends for automated farming operations. Such a huge decline in the agricultural workforce is encouraging governments and private organizations to focus on agricultural automation equipment and systems.
Managing individual birds (layers/broilers) in the poultry industry requires huge labor and is cost-effective. Automated poultry equipment plays an important role in managing things like maintaining climatic control, hygienic conditions, helping in easy feeding, separation of birds, etc. Thus, with the given global shortage of skilled labor, it is only logical to look for ways to intensify the automation level in a poultry processing plant.
North America Dominates the Market
The usage of automated poultry farm machinery is highly observed in North America due to the high adoption of technology, increasing demand for poultry products, and emerging new entrants with innovative products. The United States holds the major market in the region, due to the presence of high production of meat compared to Canada and Mexico. As per the FAOSTAT, in 2021, the United States has around 1.60 billion poultry birds with chickens holding the major count i.e., 1.52 billion, followed by Mexico with 608.4 million poultry birds.
Similarly, in the United States, poultry meat is largely consumed compared to other countries in the region. In 2021, the country produced around 23.2 million metric ton of poultry meat. Poultry farming is the major farming business in the region compared to other livestock animals, and hence the demand for automated poultry equipment has been increasing. With the increasing poultry meat production due to rising consumption, the demand is expected to boost the need for automated poultry farms in the region in coming years.
