Dr Mandeep Azad and Dr Manmeet Motan
Milk production is anticipated to reach 127.3 million tonnes at the end of 11th Plan (2011-12). The landless, marginal and small farmers hold about 82% of dairy animals and contribute about 70% of milk production of India. Total milk production of India is about 121.8 million tones 2010-2011. The phenomenal growth of milk production in India – from 20 million MT to 120 million MT in a span of just 50 years – has been made possible only because of the dairy cooperative movement. This has propelled India to emerge as the largest milk producing country in the World today. The dairy cooperative movement has spread across the length and breadth of the country, covering more than 125,000 villages of 180 Districts in 22 States. The dairy cooperatives have also been instrumental in bridging the social divide of caste, creed, race, religion & language at the villages, by offering open and voluntary membership .Operation Flood has been the most beneficial project funded by the World Bank anywhere in the World, an incremental return of Rs. 400 billion annually have been generated by an investment of Rs. 20 billion over a period of 20 years..
Gandhiji saw a great virtue in co-operation as an instrument of rural development A co-operative is a form of organization that is widely prevalent in developing countries including India and that has great potential as an instrument of rural development. India can rightly claim to have the largest network of co-operatives in the world. As of March 31, 1996, there were nearly 4.72 lakh rural co-operatives of 24 different types having the total membership of some 220 million and the total working capital of Rs.15,30,684 million. Various efforts had been made to promote dairy development as a major instrument for rural development in India. In general, the objectives of the policies and programs are to increase milk production, improve nutritional standards, and improve the economy of small farmers. Dairy cooperatives have an important role on dairy development in India, such as milk collection and improving milk marketing facilities, adopting measures; credit, feed supply, veterinary aid, artificial insemination and cows insurance to promote milk production, undertaking more farmers oriented research and studies on the socio economic aspects of dairy business, expanding dairy education and extension services, and enhancing government role in integrated dairy development.
A large number of people in rural India depend on agriculture for their livelihood. But the considerable developments that have taken place in Indian agriculture have not brought many benefits to these people, and have had little impact on alleviating rural poverty. In a densely populated country such as India, the problem of rural poverty cannot possibly be resolved by redistribution of land that is in short supply. Thus, one of the viable alternatives at this stage would be to concentrate on developing efforts that would require less resource and have a short income-generating span. Dairy farming is such an alternative. It contributes in household income among landless people and small farmers by providing gainful employment opportunities. It also plays an important role as the domestic source of milk. Thus, the dairy farming, which can play a key role in improving the socio economic status of the large percentage of the rural people, has a good scope for development in India. Unfortunately, most of dairy farmers lack capital and proper technology to conduct the dairy farming individually. Government has introduced the cooperative system to overcome these limitations and provided various services to improve dairy farming as a whole. By joining the cooperative, farmers are able to raise funds through savings or credit activities and improve dairy farming through the services provided by the cooperatives.
Operation Flood and dairy co-operatives emerged in India as the largest rural employment scheme, enabling the modernization of the dairy sector to a level from where it can take off to meet not only the country’s demand for milk and milk products but can also exploit global market opportunities. It is found that the dairy co-operatives play a vital role in alleviating rural poverty by augmenting rural milk production and marketing. Involvement of intermediaries; lack of bargaining power by the producers; and lack of infrastructure facilities for collection, storage, transportation, and processing are the major constraints which affect the prices received by producers in milk marketing. Milk quality, product development, infrastructure support development, and global marketing are found to be future challenges of India’s milk marketing.
Dairying is a centuries-old tradition for millions of Indian rural households; domesticated animals have been an integral part of the farming systems from time immemorial. Milk contributes more to the national economy than any other farm commodity. In the context of poverty and malnutrition, milk has a special role to play for its many nutritional advantages as well as providing supplementary income to some 70 million farmers in over 500,000 remote villages More importantly, the farmers earn an average 27.3 percent of their income from dairying, with as high as 53 percent for landless and as low as 19 percent for the large farmers.
Currently, more than 80 percent of the milk produced in the country is marketed by unorganized sectors and less than 20 percent by the organized sector. The organized sector involves government and co-operatives; the unorganized sector involves private organizations. Marketing of the majority of the milk through unorganized sectors is likely to dissuade small dairy farmers from expending production, which is absolutely necessary to keep up with the strong demand growth as milk consumption is likely to more than double by 2020.
Low productivity of milk animals is a serious constraint to dairy development. The productivity of dairy animals could be increased by crossbreeding low-yielding nondescript cows with high-yielding selected indigenous purebreds or suitable exotic breeds in a phased manner. The cattle-breeding policy should not only focus on milk yield but should also provide for the production of good-quality bullocks to meet the draft-power requirements of agriculture. India has the largest cattle and buffalo population in the world. More than 67 percent of dairy animals are owned by marginal and small farmers, which constitute the core milk-production sector in the country. Many of these farmers own dairy animals primarily to supply milk for their own consumption. Slightly more than 30 percent of the milk produced in the country is retained in producer households. Eighty percent of milk is marketed through the highly fragmented un-organized sector, which includes local milk vendors, wholesalers, retailers, and producers themselves.
Despite all the problems it faces, the dairy sector holds high promise as a dependable source of livelihood for the vast majority of the rural poor. Liberalization of world trade in dairy products under the new trade regime of the WTO poses new challenges and has opened up new export opportunities for the dairy industry. The dairy sector in India needs to enhance its competitive economic advantage in dairy products in terms of both quality and cost and its credibility in international markets. The role of government should be to direct, coordinate, and regulate the activities of various organizations engaged in dairy development; to establish and maintain a level playing field for all stakeholders; and to create and maintain a congenial socio-economic, institutional, and political environment for smallholder dairy development. A comprehensive dairy development policy must be formulated. Such policy should be an integral part of national development policy and due consideration should be given to its direct and indirect effects on other sub-sectors of the economy and vice-versa.
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