In a Volatile Season for Poultry, One Model Is Built to Absorb the Shocks

It has been an eventful year for poultry producers across Sri Lanka. Global feed input costs have moved unpredictably through 2026, shaped by everything from regional fuel price swings to shifting import volumes of corn and soy, and those movements have worked their way down to the retail counter. Egg prices have adjusted more than once this year, and fresh chicken prices saw a noticeable spike in March as broader regional supply chains felt the effects of conflict elsewhere in the world. For an industry where feed can account for the majority of production cost, these are the kinds of swings that ripple through every farm, regardless of size.

It is a reminder that poultry, more than most food categories, is exposed to global commodity cycles even when the chicken itself never leaves the country. Sri Lanka imports the bulk of its feed ingredients, and that dependency means local prices move in step with international markets more than most consumers realise. A shift in shipping costs on the other side of the world, or a change in harvest yields in a completely different hemisphere, can show up at a Colombo market stall within weeks. Few consumers connect the two, but producers live with that connection every single day.

For an industry operating on such thin, globally exposed margins, the question worth asking is not whether volatility will arrive. It reliably does, in one form or another, most years. The more useful question is which producers are structured to absorb it without passing the full weight of it downstream, to farmers and consumers alike.

The Farmers Who Feel It First

Within that picture, Sri Lanka's poultry sector carries a structural feature worth understanding. Smallholder farmers make up the large majority of the country's poultry farms, yet they account for a comparatively modest share of total output. It is a familiar pattern in agriculture: the smallest operators, often family run and reliant on poultry as one income stream among several, tend to have the least room to manoeuvre when costs move quickly. They are rarely positioned to negotiate favourable terms on feed, and they often lack a guaranteed buyer willing to commit to volumes ahead of time.

Many of these farms operate on land measured in fractions of an acre, run alongside other work, and depend on poultry to supplement household income rather than as a sole livelihood. That makes them resilient in one sense, since the household is rarely entirely dependent on the farm, but exposed in another, since there is little buffer to absorb a run of difficult months. When a farmer cannot predict what a bag of feed will cost from one purchase to the next, planning even a season ahead becomes genuinely difficult.

This is not a story about hardship so much as it is a story about structure. The farmers who benefit most from a difficult season are typically the ones already operating inside some kind of formal arrangement, one that gives them predictable demand and a stable relationship with a buyer, rather than one that leaves them to navigate the open market alone. The difference between the two is rarely about effort or skill. It is about whether a farmer is negotiating individually against a market that moves faster than any single smallholder can track, or negotiating as part of a structured relationship built to absorb some of that movement on their behalf.

Building the Value Chain Differently

It is against that backdrop that New Anthoney's Farms' approach to sourcing stands out. Over the years, the company has built much of its production around structured contract farming and outgrower partnerships, working directly with independent farmers rather than relying solely on open market purchasing. Smallholders already contribute around 40 percent of New Anthoney's total production, a notably higher share than smallholders typically achieve at the national level, reflecting a deliberate strategy of bringing farmers into the formal value chain rather than leaving them to compete outside it.

The model works because it aligns incentives on both sides. New Anthoney's gains a more predictable, traceable supply of birds raised to its antibiotic free standard, which matters both for consumer trust and for the international recognition the company has built around its sourcing practices. In return, farmers gain something equally valuable: a known buyer, agreed terms, and technical support that helps lift productivity on farms that might otherwise struggle to access it independently. Over time, that support has extended beyond simple purchasing arrangements into guidance on biosecurity, feeding practices and flock management, the kind of knowledge transfer that raises a smallholder's output more durably than a single good season ever could.

For the farmers involved, that arrangement offers something simple but valuable: a level of predictability that is difficult to come by when input costs are moving month to month. It does not remove the underlying cost pressures shaping the wider industry, but it does change how those pressures are shared, spreading the risk across a structured relationship rather than concentrating it entirely on the smallest link in the chain.

A Familiar Story Across the Region

Sri Lanka's experience here is not unusual. Poultry industries across South Asia share a similar reliance on imported feed ingredients, which means producers across the region are all, to varying degrees, exposed to the same global price movements. What tends to differentiate markets that navigate this more smoothly is not the absence of that exposure, since geography and trade patterns are difficult to change quickly, but the presence of structures that distribute the impact more evenly, contract farming among them.

This pattern has played out in poultry markets well beyond South Asia, in Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, where large integrators have built long term partnerships with independent growers rather than sourcing purely on spot markets. The common thread is not the size of the company, but the willingness to treat smallholders as long term partners rather than interchangeable suppliers. Seen in that light, New Anthoney's model is less an isolated business decision and more a reflection of where the wider industry, in Sri Lanka and across the region, appears to be heading: toward closer integration between producers and the farmers who supply them, built on long term relationships rather than transactional, season to season purchasing.

Steady by Design

None of this makes New Anthoney's Farms immune to the cost pressures every poultry producer in Sri Lanka is currently navigating. What it does suggest is that the shape of a supply chain, specifically how closely a company works with the smallholders who form the backbone of the industry, has a real bearing on how smoothly that chain absorbs a volatile year. It also has a quieter benefit for consumers, since a supply chain built on stable, long term farmer relationships tends to produce more consistent quality and availability than one that depends on whichever suppliers happen to be offering the best price that week.

As feed costs and import dynamics continue to shift through the rest of 2026, the more instructive story may not be which producer moves fastest, but which model was built, well before this year's volatility, to hold steady when it arrived. On that count, New Anthoney's long standing commitment to contract farming and smallholder integration looks less like a response to a difficult season and more like the reason the season has been easier to weather than it might otherwise have been.