Centre to push milk, cattle productivity in untapped districts

NEW DELHI: The Union department of animal husbandry is preparing strategies to ramp up milk and cattle productivity in so-called aspirational districts of the country, given rising postpandemic demand, after India managed to avoid milk-fat import by a government-backed agency for the first time in decades in 2022-23 according to a senior official. Union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying Parshottam Rupala on April 15 said the world’s largest milk producer was not looking to import dairy items, such as butter, as supplies were improving, as prices rose the highest in a decade due to tightening supplies. The minister had said to meet rising milk demand, his ministry would “tap into untapped areas” rather than resort to import. The government has categorised 112 districts in 27 states as “aspirational” for more public investments since they lag most other states on socio-economic parameters. To implement Pashudhan Jagruty Abhiyaan, a programme to focus on untapped regions with livestock potential, additional secretary in the ministry Varsha Joshi met representatives of about 1,000 villages via video-conferencing. “We give complete information about schemes and veterinary services and how they can be applied for in the aspirational districts,” the first official said. India has a well-established cooperative dairy business model that has helped it to become the world’s largest producer at 221 million tonnes of raw milk, clocking average annual growth rates of 6%. The steady growth has been disrupted by the pandemic, followed a debilitating cattle epidemic known as the lumpy skin disease, which is estimated to have killed or emaciated nearly 300,000 cattle in 2022. India has one of the largest national livestock populations in the world at 536.76 million, according to the livestock census, 2019, which is a key source of income of nearly 80 million farmers. Livestock accounts for 30% of the country’s gross value added, or GVA, in the farm sector. GVA is a measure of income that subtracts net taxes from gross domestic product, or GDP. The Pashudhan Jagruty Abhiyaan programme is designed to help farmers acquire latest practices and techniques in animal husbandry and dairy farming, which will help push up farm incomes, the official cited in the first instance added. The programme will reach about 100,000 farmers, who joined the meeting virtually on Tuesday.