In Ghazipur, a small town tucked along the Ganges river in north India, farmer Satyadev Prajapati is counting fewer eggs hatched by his 350 free-range hens as the price of their feed soars by 40 per cent.
India's fast-expanding biofuel programme, meant to cut oil imports and their emissions, has ratcheted up competition for maize, and small poultry producers like Prajapati are bearing the brunt.
"If maize prices go up, but the price of eggs doesn't, it hits us directly," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
