Production, processing and marketing infrastructure

If India has to emerge as an exporting country, it is imperative t h a t   w e   s h o u l d   develop proper production, processing and marketing infrastructure, which is capable of meeting international quality requirements.   A comprehensive s t r a t e g y   f or producing quality and safe dairy products should be formulated with suitable legal backup.

Women play an important role in dairy farming

Women involvement in dairy farm

Women play an important role in dairy farming sector. They gave fodder to livestock, milking the animal, take off different dairy products from milk, take care of livestock at home, do weaving, cleaning shelter, converting in livestock management and related deceases. So women must be paid their share in livestock income. Hence there is an urgent need to commercialize their activity and give training to the women for rearing of livestock women in rural livestock can never be ignored. More than 8 working hours in the day are spent by women covering all the dairy farming practices. Dairy farming as an entrepreneurial venture owing to its high adaptability in wide range of agro-climate condition, thriving better on coarse fodder than cattle, producing higher fat SNF-milk, leaner and lower cholesterol and carrying high resistance against decease has big achievement. Cattle rearing cover more than 50% of the working hour of women in comparison to 10% of the working time of their counterpart the man.

Problems in dairy farming

Dairying is a centuries-old tradition for millions of rural households; domesticated animals have been an integral part of the farming system from time immemorial. It provides supplementary income to some 70 million farmers in over 500,000 remote villages 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 large farmers. Annual milk production in India have more than tripled in the last three decades, rising from 21 million tones in 1968 to 80 million metric tones in 2001. Despite this impressive growth in milk production in the last three decades, productivity of dairy animals remains very low. Currently more than 80 percent of the milk produced in the country is marketed by unorganized sector is likely to dissuade small dairy farmers from expanding production, which is absolutely necessary to keep up with the strong demand growth.

Suggestions to improve the growth of dairy farming in india

1. Cooperative banks and other national banks should come forward to extend liberal credit facilities to the farmers particularly small and marginal farmers for the development of dairy enterprise.
2. Establishing a veterinary service center to improve the efficiency of the artificial insemination scheme, veterinary services must be provided to the farmer door on all bases at a reasonable cost.
3. The changing cropping pattern should aim to produce sufficient green and dry fodder to livestock population in the village and encourage the farmer to take up fodder cultivation on a commercial basis.   

Milk Production and Marketing

India hold the largest ruminant livestock population, live animals milk and milk products sales were the major sources of income for dairy farmers. The milk traders have made more profit then milk procedures. Milk procedures face many problems such as lack of knowledge in dairy production and management system, in adequate input supply and services financial weakness and cost of feed. Market problems are critical issues raised by dairy farmer capacity development and training is a key factor to enhance to skill of farmers and pastoralists in dairy production, processing and marketing. High factorial count mainly reflect poor hygiene and long time lag between milk and sales of milk. The bulking of milk from many areas and production system cause health risk if the milk is not pasteurized or adequately boiled. Future efforts will focused on improving milk quality by informal market agent (small traders, small retail outlets) by training and extension on appropriate handling containers.

Main problems faced by Dairying Farmers

Although there is a remarkable improvement of dairy enterprises in recent years, the dairy farmers faced some problems in developing their dairy enterprise. The major constraint hindering the development of dairy sector is:

Shortage of feed: 

          Shortage of green fodder and feed concentrate is the root cause of poor performance of dairy sector in general as the genetic milk production potential of crossbred cow could not be exploited fully in absence of proper nutrition.

Pitfalls

• Quality dairy animals are in short supply. Artificial insemination service for breeding better cattle has limited coverage, barely reaching an estimated 10% of bovines.
• Inability to feed cattle adequately throughout the year.
• Animal health cover is getting increasingly neglected. In many states, over 70-80% of the veterinary budget is used up for staff salaries and transportation, with little left to buy medicines and other supplies.
• Limited investment in setting up or expansion of milk procurement network. The rapid expansion in milk processing capacities has not kept pace with production and procurement.

Positive Aspects

• Dairying is crucial in providing employment and supplementary income to the bulk of rural families in rural India. The main beneficiaries are women, who contribute over 70% of labour in cattle rearing.
• Crop residues and by products fed to the cattle form the basis of grain saving dairying appropriate to mixed farming system.

• The buffalo is India's milking machine, accounting for more than half of the country's milk production: It is not able for its efficiency as a converter of coarse feeds into

Dairying an Instrument of Social and Economic Change

Milk production in India is dominated by small and marginal landholding farmers and by landless labouers who, in aggregate, own about 70 percent of the the national milch animal herd. These farmers; maintain an average  herd of one or two milch animals, comprising cows and or buffaloes. The animals nutritional requirements are largely met by agricultural waste and bye products. Ample labour and a small land base encourage farmers to practice dairying as an occupation subsidiary to agriculture. While income from crop production is seasonal, dairying provides a stable, year-round income, which is an important economic incentive for the small-farmer to take to dairying. It is not surprising that the small farmer to take dairying. It is not surprising that the small farmer and the landless labourer are more often than not victims of moneylenders and of natural calamities.Dairying as subsidiary source of income, is a real relied to most of these weaker; froups in society. Often one two milk animals enables these farmers to generate sufficient additional income to break the vicious subsistence agricultural-debt cycle. Dairying is an economic activity, which evens out cash flows to households, in contrast to income from crops, which comes only at the end of a season. Further, dairying provides for an indirect income insurance against risks from crops, such as crop failure due to drought or pests.

Organised Dairy Units

Over 70 percent of the milk produced in our country is by small, marginal and landless farmers. There are about 100 million farm holdings in our; country. There are nearly 70 million households who maintain a milk herd of 108 million heads of cattle i.e. 64 million cows and 44 million buffaloes, engaged in milk production, of which more than 10 million are in the cooperative sector. Livestock reargin including dairying is not only a source of employment and income, but is also a storehouse of wealth, an asset that often helps tide over inforeseen demands for liquid cash. Medium and large holdings with a holding size of over 4 hectares account for only 8.8 percent of the total holdings. 77.4 percent of the farm holdings i.e. 77 million holdings posses lank sizes less than 2 hectares. Income from dairying contributes nearly a third of the rural households gross income, and in the case of landless wage earning households, nearly a half.

Contribution to GDP

Agriculture contributes to the GDP ( Gross Domestic Product) to the extent of 25 percent of which one fourth is through livestock products. With 13 percent of world trade being global, India has immense potential to be a partner in world trade. A growth rate of 4.5 percent has been achieved by the dairy sector during the past decade as compared to the 2 percent growth recorded by the agricultural sector as a whole. In fact, an annual production of 12000 million tonnes of milk can be achieved by the year 2010, only if the growth rate is kept at a rate of not less than 5.5 percent. Efforts must be made to bring about substantial increases in productivity to the tune of 12 - 15 kg for crossbreds, 5 - 8 kg for indigenous cows and 8 - 12 kg for buffaloes. Dairy sector ranks first among the individual agriculture commodities in terms of total value of production. The value of milk and its products is 70000 crore rupees and that of dairy industry as a whole is 105000 crore rupees.

Milk Production in India state-wise

This table below shows that the milk production in India state-wise.

Estimates of Milk Production - Statewise
(000 tonnes)
State	2001-02	2002-03	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09
All India	84406	86159	88082	92484	97066	100869	104840	108463
Uttar Pradesh	14648	15288	15943	16512	17356	18095	18861	19537
Andhra Pradesh	5814	6584	6959	7257	7624	7939	8925	9570
Rajasthan	7758	7789	8054	8310	8713	9375	9536	9491
Punjab	7932	8173	8391	8554	8909	9168	9282	9387
Gujarat	5862	6089	6421	6745	6960	7533	7911	8386
Maharashtra	6094	6238	6379	6567	6769	6978	7210	7455
Madhya Pradesh	5283	5343	5388	5506	6283	6375	6572	6855
Bihar **	2664	2869	3180	4743	5060	5450	5783	5934
Haryana	4978	5124	5221	5222	5299	5367	5442	5745
Tamil Nadu	4988	4622	4752	4784	5474	5560	5586	5673
Karnataka	4797	4539	3857	3917	4022	4124	4244	4538
West Bengal	3515	3600	3686	3790	3891	3982	4087	4176
Kerala	2718	2419	2111	2025	2063	2119	2253	2441
Orissa	929	941	997	1283	1342	1431	1625	1672
J & K	1360	1389	1414	1422	1400	1400	1498	1498
Jharkhand	940	952	954	1330	1335	1401	1442	1466
Uttaranchal	1066	1079	1188	1195	1206	1213	1221	1230
Chhattisgarh	795	804	812	831	839	849	866	908
Himachal Pradesh	756	773	786	870	869	872	874	884
Assam	682	705	727	739	747	751	752	753
Delhi	294	296	299	303	310	289	282	285
Tripura	90	79	84	86	87	89	91	96
Manipur	68	69	71	75	77	77	78	78
Meghalaya	66	68	69	71	73	75	77	77
Goa	45	46	48	57	56	57	58	59
Nagaland	57	58	63	69	74	67	45	53
Sikkim	37	45	48	46	48	49	49	49
Chandigarh	43	43	44	43	46	46	47	47
Pondicherry	37	37	40	41	43	45	46	46
A&N Islands	23	26	25	24	20	23	24	26
Arunachal Pradesh	42	46	46	48	48	49	50	24
Mizoram	14	15	15	16	15	16	17	17
D&N Haveli	8	8	8	4	5	5	5	4
Lakshadweep	2	2	1	1	2	2	2	2
Daman & Diu	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Source: Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, GoI

This table shows that Uttar Pradesh is the highest milk producing state in India, Andhra Pradesh is the second largest milk producing state in India and Rajasthan is 3rd largest milk producing state in India. In 2009 the milk production in UP is 19537 tonnes, in Andhra Pradesh milk production is 9570 tonnes and in Rajasthan milk production is 9491 tonnes.