Helping cattle farming and rawhide trade

The highest number of livestock including cattle, goat and sheep are slaughtered in Bangladesh during one of the major religious festivals of the Muslims, the Eid-ul-Adha. According to reports, around 12.5 million cattle and smaller animals were reared with an eye to this year's Eid-ul-Adha, though the actual demand was estimated to be around 10.4 million sacrificial animals. That means some 2.1 million animals remained unsold in the Eid cattle markets this time. But as could be learnt from some cattle dealers who came to the capital city with the hope of making good profit by selling their livestock, there were fewer buyers than expected in the city's designated cattle markets. The reason for this depressed demand for sacrificial animals during the just-celebrated Eid is also not hard to comprehend. The prices of essential commodities have seen an unprecedented rise (officially the inflation is 9.9 per cent, though unofficially it is around 20 per cent), whereas the income levels of the fixed and lower income people have remained stagnant. So, fewer buyers of sacrificial animals went to the cattle markets this year than in normal times.
It's a double whammy for the cattle farmers who raised the livestock targeting the Eid.This is obviously bad news especially for the bigger cattle famers who invested a large sum of money in raising these animals. The farmers who took loan from bank to raise their animals will be worse off. Cattle rearing is indeed a risky enterprise in Bangladesh. But consider the role they played in reducing the country's dependence on Indian cattle, most of which were skinny and sick, that would be brought to Bangladesh from the other side of the border, both legally and illegally. Then most often the rampant smuggling of India-origin cattle into Bangladesh was blamed on the so-called 'Bangladeshi cattle smugglers', whose lives did not matter to the security guards on the other side of the border. However,the country's cattle farmers did a revolution in that the nation is now self-sufficient in livestock production.No doubt, the 2015's ban on the cross-border cattle trade by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in Indiadid played a critical role in forcing Bangladesh to be on its own in this regard. But if cattle farmers face such big losses year after year, a time may come when they may switch to other income earning activities. That would be disastrous not only for cattle farming as such, but also for its spin-off, the leather sector. The leather sector, which has high export potential as it brought USD1.25 billion last fiscal year (FY22), may greatly suffer as a result. Unfortunately, despite its huge potential for contribution to the country's export diversification efforts, this sector has already been suffering due to other reasons which include wrong policies of the government and the hunger for super-profit by a segment of operators in the leather sector.
Consider this. The hides of the sacrificial animals constitute about 50 per cent of the total hides produced in the country round the year. So far as their domestic use is concerned, the cattle and goat hides produced during the Eid-ul-Adha should be enough to feed the country's tannery industries. Sadly, seasonal and other small-scale cattle and goat hide traders who collect and sell the hides to the stockists/wholesalers have been getting a raw deal from the latter in recent years. Though the government sets the per square-foot (sft) prices of cowhide within Dhaka and outside Dhaka every year (this year, for instance, the prices of cowhide have been fixed between taka 50 and taka 55 within Dhaka and between Taka 45 and Taka 48 outside Dhaka.The prices of goatskin have not been readjusted, though), but in actual practice they are sold below that price. Sometimes, the prices of hides go down even below their purchasing price, let alone the officially determined prices. Such reports have already started to come from different markets of the capital city as well as from the districts. In such a situation, as it was also the case last year and the year before, smaller hide traders prefer the hides to rot to selling those at throwaway prices. This is real bad news for such a potential sector of the economy.
So, if the thriving livestock sector and the potential leather industry of the country are to be saved, the government must intervene. Cattle farmers have to be provided with cheap bank loans and cattle feed at a subsidised rate. Also, there should be some arrangements to insure investors in the livestock sector especially those who rear cattle targeting the Eid-ul-Azha market. Regarding the leather sector, which is at present an informal one, it should be allowed to grow into a formal sector where the operators especially the small and medium-level animal hide traders will have trade licences, enjoy access to bank credit and get the government's policy support. For donation purpose, the owners of sacrificial animals can donate the money obtained from selling the hides and skins to the institutions of their choice. This will help rawhide to develop into a commodity controlled by market forces.
[email protected]