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Focus

Milk Needs New Blood

V. P. Gandhi
Apr 2010

The siblings of farmers and milk producers do not want to be a farmers or milk producers. There is a visible dissatisfaction on the part of younger generation to go for dairy farming to rear milch animals. Even the young diploma holders / graduates in animal husbandry and agriculture are reluctant. The policy makers and stake holders should identify the causes and introduce corrective measures and workable mechanism to reverse this dangerous trend for the healthy survival our dairy industry.

The state of our poor livestock keepers needs urgent review. Public funds used strategically to support the dairy development and extension work with higher state / central plan financial allocations must bring benefits to the poor rural dairy owners. We have to reduce poverty through livestock production and marketing as the poor producers depend upon the cash income they get from the sale of small quantity of milk they produce from their milch animals.

The enterprise of small holder dairy farmers with low producing animals seems to be economically unviable. With the present climatic conditions, a substantial number of such animals (buffaloes) particularly those which did not conceive for 1-2 years were sold by milk producers to slaughter houses resulting in loss of our germ plasma and decrease in milk production / availability of marketable surplus milk. Meat export worth Rs. 4,000 crore was achieved by the slaughter houses in India in the current year.

While, visiting the milk shed in any part of UP / Haryana, by & large you can observe that the dairy farmer / milk producers are having average two to three milch buffaloes being one in lactation, second pregnant and the third dry and not calving since last one to two years calling for the need of a subject matter specialist for treatment of infertility and sterility cases and nutritional cattle feed with traces of minerals mixture. Earlier he had patience to keep and feed this animal, but now the buffalo is being sold to slaughter houses at a remunerative / competitive price based on the live weight of the buffaloes. This is how we have partly achieved an annual target of Rs. 4000 thousand crore by the meat processing plants.

Subsidy Subsiding

The present case with subsidies on Cattle Feed in some areas is also not fool proof. By subsidizing Cattle Feed compromising on quality, the small producers are the worst sufferers. There should be no complaints from the milk producers on the quality of feed suppliers especially by the public sector agencies or cooperatives under the present circumstances. This work of manufacturing the Cattle Feed should be on the basis of 'Computerized Formula' finalized by NDDB with the availability of different local feed ingredients, with declared DCP / TDN and at reasonable rates to the milk producers in the specified milk shed with well organized dairy plant of co-operative / public and private sector duly registered under MMPO Order / FSSA on the basis of their monthly milk collection data.

Procurement prices are also being increased though not commensurate with the increase in input prices. Thus, the situation is not conducive to milk producers. Non-remunerative milk producers' price is making the dairy farming unattractive and becomes the most important constraint to dairy farming. The big question is who can do dairy farming in India? It is in the hands of landless agricultures labour as well as marginal & small farmers. 60% of the total milk production is by these milk producers. I am referring to a particular segment of Dairy farmers who is resource poor, maintains 1,2,3 less productive milch animals for livelihood and is vulnerable to changes, however, small.

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