Author(s): Suchita Mishra, Neelma Kunwar and Ved Prakash

Abstract:
Dairying has become an important secondary source of income for millions of rural families and has assumed the most important role in providing employment and income generating opportunity. Indian Dairying is unique in more than one ways. Contributing about 5.3 percent to India’s agricultural GDP, milk is a leading agricultural produce. The value output from milk at current prices during 2006-07 has been over Rs.144386 crores which is higher than the output from paddy (Rs.85032 crores) alone and is also higher than the value output from Wheat (Rs.66721 crores) and sugarcane (Rs.28488 crores), put together. The unique feature of the system is that about 120 million rural families are engaged in milk production activities as against big specialized dairy farmers in the west. During the post independence period, progress made in dairy sector has been spectacular. Milk production has increased more than four folds from a mere 17 million tonnes during 1950-51 to 104.8 million tonnes in 2007-08. However, the country’s per capita availability is still lower than the world’s daily average of about 285 gms though it has doubled from 124 gms in 1950-51 to 256 gms per day in 2007-08. This impressive growth effort speaks volume about the co-coordinated efforts of large number of milk producing farmers, scientists, planners, NGO’s and industry in achieving self-sufficiency in milk production.