How to increase income of livestock farmer in India?

How to increase income of livestock farmer in India?

• Simrandeep Singh

You can’t be successful in any business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world….you have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart… [Thomas Watson Sr. (1874-1956)], a very well explained belief system and mantra of a businessman by Mr. Watson but what is this to do with livestock farmers. Well in 21st century there is an enormous need of hour for livestock farmers to switch their profession. Well now livestock farming is an old laborious filthy “not in trend” profession which earns you marginal profits. So what are the career options available to such people to adopt for a bright future? I have a suggestion for you all, a sure fit, for guaranteed returns in future and now for something completely different- quit being a livestock farmer and go become livestock businessman/businesswomen. The farmer will never be happy again, he carries his hearts in his boots, for either the rain is destroying his grains and making feed expenses go up or the drought is destroying his roots and leaving his/her animals with no forages. Well this is very novel field for Indian sub-continent full of prospects and prosperity. “I must not lose my resolve I will march forward, even if I have to do so alone…” this should be the motto for upcoming business enthusiast coming up for becoming the change that society has aspiration for.

But speculations are poor form of decision making and an equally poor form of business which leads to losses, so let’s peek into some data analysis. In 2001 India became the world leader in milk production, closely followed by the USA, with a production volume of 84 million tons. More than half of the milk is produced by buffaloes. India has about three times as many ‘dairy’ animals as the USA, the vast majority (over 80 percent) being kept in herds of 2 to 8 animals. Annual milk yield per dairy animal is about one tenth of that achieved in the USA and about one fifth of the yield of a New Zealand dairy cow. India is

• World’s highest livestock owner at about 535.78 million
• First in the total buffalo population in the world – 109.85 million buffaloes
• Second in the population of goats – 148.88 million goats
• Second largest poultry market in the world
• Second largest producer of fish and also second largest aquaculture nation in the world
• Third in the population of sheep (74.26 millions)
• Fifth in in the population of ducks and chicken (851.81 million)
• Tenth in camel population in the world – 2.5 lakhs

Source: 20th Livestock Census

So much opportunities and blessing around but still conditions of you millions of people as farmers, still stand miserable. I believe there is no need to make another checklist of challenges and problems the big, enormous, giant, gigantic headaches you bear still I am going to mention some problems and challenges faced by FARMERS in livestock sector that data believes, are big and eligible enough to consider for brain storming;

1. Low Productivity of Indian bovine
2. Imbalanced feeding to animals
3. Limited access of milk producers to organized sector
4. Age old infrastructure operating on obsolete technology
5. Lack of organized credit system
6. Lack of manufacturing facilities for Value Added Products.
7. Lack of efficient chilling infrastructure at village level
8. Lack of penetration in smaller cities/ towns in terms of milk marketing
9. Lack of efficient cold chain distribution network.
10. Lack of implementation of information and technologies on farm arrived via extension sources
11. Lack of knowledge to maintain records
12. Lack of financial education and farm economics for livestock farmers

Farming looks mighty easy when your plough is your pen, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field or livestock housing. Well many of you reading this article may have a similar thought in mind, but please be calm and try to evaluate the other side of coin.

It is time to restructure and revitalize the present institutional set-up in the livestock sector, enhance institution-level efficiency, and promote new institutional models to handle the emerging challenges in livestock sector development. The efforts should aim to promote and nurture the grass-root level participatory bodies, i.e. you all livestock businessman/businesswomen all over the livestock sector. The share of livestock in agricultural sector GDP growth has been increasing faster than the crop sector in the past decade because of the rising demand for livestock products propelled by income and population growth and urbanization. The livestock sector plays an important role in the socio-economic development of rural households. It contributes about 6 percent to the Gross Domestic Product and 25 percent to the Agricultural Gross Domestic Product. As per the 20th Livestock census, the total livestock population shows an increase of 4.6 per cent over the Livestock census 2012. As of conditions and circumstances it is quite a right time to invest in livestock sector as a fertile business and not just like supplementary subsidiary business as usual trend depicts. To achieve this objective I suggest a 3P MODEL for wholesome profitable sustainable and good for all kind of a new business model. 3P stands for PRODUCER i.e.us livestock businessman and businesswomen, PROCESSER i.e. this could be someone among us handling different perspective of supply chain or even we also and PEOPLE i.e. consumers. As fact from history being surpassed from generations to generation from the time immemorial which still stand strong evidence for a fact that any system works well and efficiently in presence of a guiding body and a regulatory cum promoting body. For our business model the guiding and reference bodies could be central and state agricultural universities and regulatory cum promoting function can be performed by governments of states and center union government. As fact of concern about fitness of nature and threats projected by establishing any kind of business now day’s sustainability and ecofriendlyness of business are taken into account. These norms can be correlated with international agencies and organizationsand related national or state norms. These are the stakeholding considerations for making your mindset and preparation ready to establish a long live business as there is quite a very necessary need to know about stakeholders of industry you are going to be part of.

Freedom is what we’re all looking for, and value is the way to achieve it. With this statement I am going to make you aware about the freshest talk of the market; the delivery of value to consumer or to next component of supply chain {to processer in case you are a producer and operate only in production segment}.consumer need fresh, creamy, non-adulterated, hygienic, and dairy products of high variety. What processer aspires to get from producer is clean milk with no or permissible limits of antibody and hormonal residues, no adulteration, a well transported milk with maintained cold chain and better fat and SNF content and some other technical and clinical specification. Same are also aspired by consumers too. More value you deliver at a reliable and market competitive price longer you can run your business and can maintain edge over comptitors.  An established business running on certain set values always get quite consistent and long run returns.

For a matter of fact as once said by an intelligent person is that nearly all good things are already been found outand recorded in books or other forms of information, what is left unfinished is implementation. I praise various agricultural universities and allied bodies for carrying out various excellent extension functions for their efforts and hard work for ever raising theirs bars and improving the dissemination of knowledge in rural and on farm areas. No doubt that there are loopholes in system but I am quite optimistic for better implementation of research and extension efforts in field  in near future and these people along with government will eventually perform their part of making agriculture again a profitable “in trend business” in a scientific way with commercial and corporatetonic.

For what I am more concerned and want to elaborate in this particulararticle is about need of record keeping practices, farm economics and financial education of livestock business holders as only this knowledge will transform you into businessman and businesswomen. There is a popular phrase in corporate world for increasing income of company that either you increase your prices to create more margins or decrease your expenses. In either way you make more profits. Let’s focus on this statement. Due to the fact that we are dealing in a very competitive area of highly perishable commodities segment of FMCG sector so we are not in very good state to increase prices to make more margins thus we are left with second method to increase our incomes. Record keeping, farm economics and financial education seems to be much unrelated topics to each other but let’s allow me to break this misnomer.

We all know that a bad debt is always proved detrimental for livestock farming. But now as a livestock business owner let’s think like businessman/women. A business owner borrows debt makes business big and stable and returns the money back to lender well in time except some popular examples in media who are willful defaulters. Leaving those people aside loan or debt is very good way to generate business. But how do they do it. Well that’s not a very difficult rocket science. Those are very basic but less known science and art of financial education. Let’s have a look on some of the rules for financial freedom, before that I want to give a mantra to you

• Try to grab the opportunity whenever you see it
• Be loyal to whatever you do or for whoeverdo it.
• Be consistent and disciplined; show up whenever you are needed; deliver more than what you are accountable for.

Coming over rules of financial education

• Start filling your pocket first. Pay yourself. It is never advisable to give warmth to neighbors by burning your home. You should be happy with what you are doing and what you are earning but never be satisfied in order to ever increasing income you can generate. Raise your target, achieve it, congratulate yourself, raise the bar again, and restart the improvement cycle. This cycle of investments could be assisted by introduction of new assets, animals, machinery or technology. Use already established assets efficiently before adding on additional and new assets.
• Save 10% of what you earn. Save to invest and if profit seems favoring, reinvest the returns. This gives you “compounding effect” the 8^th wonder of world. Interest earned on interest harvested what else kind of easy and ever increasing money you aspire for. Investments could be in farm, on animals, on technology, on supply chain management, on processing side, or whether you can expand your business to new geographical spaces, you can go online etc. etc.
• Control your expenses. Don’t spend more than what you earn. Many time people do immature expansion of their venture and ultimately fail. So be rational while spending on your business or personnel needs. Ideally you should maintain double the amount of the cash reserves, you use in operations of your business. Besides profits cash flow in the system is also important.
• Protect your principal amount. Invest in guidance of a subject matter expert. Be intelligent and rational while you are investing knows why and where you are investing; don’t chase overnight success or easy money. Don’t get excited too early in despair sign of luck until returns are harvested. You have to try hard to grab opportunity to be lucky.
• Ensure future funnels and streams of revenue increase your potential to earn. Always be improving in your skillset and knowledge and values. You may enter to consulting business to increase your income. You may use cattle dung logs as additional sources of income and likewise feathers of fowls, skin of spent or dead animals as hides, carcasses can be donated to universities in case of natural death against some money as they can use that particular carcass in education purposes and you may get money which otherwise may be lost, you may choose integrated farming model to decrease your expense and finally those decreased expenses add up your margins and profits, likewise many things can be done.
• Don’t procrastinate. Some unexpected opportunities may occur, go hit then up. Best time is now in world of opportunities; luck comes in camophlage of opportunity. Sometimes opportunities are in front of us for the particular moment and far away in very next moment, try to grab and harvest any and every opportunity with rationality.
• Have a proper credit settlement plan. Stay clear about your aspirations. Keep searching for solutions. Let me give you with a magic formula if you are caught up in a bad debt;

10% savings

70% expenses

20% debt repayment

Well this seems to be not acceptable by lender but believe me repayment in small installments are always better than no installments at all. By following this plan you will eventually see rise in your personnel assets and money and parallel decline in your debt and one day you will be not only free of debt but also financially free due to saving you made as part of your money ritual.

So thinking on what economics and record keeping has to do with these amazing laws. Well these two topics have really an important impact on these laws. To make these laws work you need have knowledge of your money flowing in and out of your business, as finances are all about you money. This is served by economics of farm and to make economic statements, calculations and calibrations work you need to maintain records of your farm and personnel expenses. Many farms in India suffer the most failures due to not maintaining the economics and other records of the farms. So maintaining records for sake of economics and finances of farm are quite important.

Any business which runs on data driven from records, trends and feedbacks backed by solid economic understanding powered by financial intelligence of business owners will surely flourish and have greater, better, sustainable and long lived returns in terms of profits, values, prosperity, financial freedom,  sustainability and never the less happiness. And the last surprise, these ideas are inspired and learnt from the people of Babylone once considered being richest people in the ancient world. Similar formulas have been used by Dubai, Singapore, HongKong, Israel and some other likely prosperous countries and all of successful people in world. These laws are so powerful that they can make a whole nation wealthy then I think it is not a bad idea to give a try to these laws to make you big and wealthy, my dear livestock businessman/ businesswomen.

Please follow and like us: