Measures to increase the income of livestock farmers in India
By Aishwarya Roy, 3rd year, BVSC and AH, RanchiVeterinary College, BAU, Kanke, Ranchi, 834006. Email id- aishwaryacomes@gmail.com
Abstract:-
It is the time to reconstruct and revitalize the present institutional setup in the livestock sector, enhance institution level efficiency, and promote new institutional model to handle the new emerging challenges in livestock sector development. The effort should aim to promote and nurture grass-root level participatory bodies all over the country as the organic link between the animal husbandry department and the smallholders.The share of livestock in agricultural sector’s 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, population growth and urbanisation. Hence, the livestock plays an important role in the improvement of socio-economic status of rural households.
- Introduction:- Role of livestock in indian and farmer’s economy
Livestock plays a very important role in indian economy. About 20.5 million people depends on livestock for their livelihood. Livestock contributes 16% to the income of small farm households as against an average of 14% for all rural households. It provides livelihood to 2/3rd of the rural population. It also provides employment to about 8.8% of the population in India. India has vast livestock resources and it is first in total Buffalo population, 2nd in total cattle and goat population, 3rd in sheep population, 5th in chicken and 10thin camel population in the world [Nagar D. 2019].The livestock provides food and non food items to the people. Among the food item, livestock provides milk, meat and eggs. It also provides fibres and skins like wool, hair, hides and pelts. Similarly, draught bullocks are the backbone of the Indian agriculture. The bullocks are saving lots of fuels which is necessary for making mechanical power. Pack animals like camel, horses, donkey, mules etc are being extensively used to transport goods in different parts of the country. Dung and animal waste material serves as very good farmyard manures and it’s value is worth rupee several chores. In addition to this ,it is also used as fuel like biogas and dung cakes. Livestock is considered as moving back because of their potentialities to dispose off during emergency. They serve as capital for landless agricultural farmers. These Livestock also serves as guarantee for availing loans from local sources. The effort should aim to promote and nurture grass-root level participatory bodies all over the country as the organic link between the animal husbandry department and the smallholders[Ali J, 2007].Livestock serves as biological control of bushes, unwanted plants and weeds in the agricultural areas. In addition to these, livestock is associated with the human beings for different cultural activities and as companion animals too [Jaiswal p. 2018].
Improving the productivity of farm animals is one of the major challenges. The average annual milk yield of Indian cattle is 1172 kg which is only about 50% of the global average. The frequent outbreak of disease like food and mouth disease, influenza, black quarter etc continue to affect livestock health and lowers productivity. Reducing greenhouse gases through mitigation and adaptation strategies will be a major challenge. Crossbreeding of indigenous species with exotic stocks to enhance the genetic potential of different species have been successful only upto certain limit. Limited artificial insemination services owing to a deficiency in quality germplasm, infrastructure and technical manpower coupled with poor conception rate following artificial insemination have been the major impediments. The livestock sector did not received the policy and financial attention it deserved. The sector received only about 12% of the total public expenditure on agriculture and allied sectors, which is disproportionately lesser than it’s contribution to agricultural GDP. The institutional mechanism to protect animals against risk are not strong enough. Only about 5% of the farm households in India access information on livestock technology. This indicates a sub-optimal outreach of the financial and information delivery system.Access to market is critical to speed up the commercialization of livestock production.[Raja R. et.al.2012].Lack to access of market may act as a disincentive to farmers to adopt improved technologies and quality inputs. Except for poultry products and to some extent for milk, market for livestock and livestock products are underdeveloped, irregular, uncertain and lacks transparency.
Further these are often dominated by informal market intermediaries who exploit the producers. Likewise, slaughtering facilities are inadequate. About half of the total meat production comes from unregistered, make-shift slaughterhouses. Marketing and transaction costs of livestock products are high taking 15-20% of the sale price. Other major challenge is inadequate availability of credit, poor access to organised markets, limited availability of quality breeding bulls, water sources depletion, deficiency of vaccines and vaccination setup, diversion of feed and fodder ingredients for industrial use[Paturkar A.M. 2019].
Measures to overcome the challenges and increase the income of farmers:-
Public spending in the livestock sector as a proportion of the value of sector’s output has fallen considerably over the last two decades. This needs to be increased to re-energize the sector. The strengthening of linkages between production and market through institutions such as cooperatives, producer’s association and contract farming is the need of the hour. Strengthened institutional support in form of credit and insurance and further the government preparing producers for a quality driven competition in the global as well as domestic market can turn out to be an effective measures towards increasing the income if livestock farmers. Infectious diseases are a major burden on the farmer’s economy. Programs such as NADCP( NATIONAL ANIMAL DISEASE CONTROL PROGRAM) aims at controlling( by 2025) and eradicating( by 2030) foot and mouth diseases and brucellosis in livestock. It aims to vaccinate over 500 million livestock heads, including cattle,buffalo, sheep, goat and pigs against FMD and around 36 million female bovine calves against brucellosis. This program relies heavily on the information network system for animal productivity and health (NAPH), a dextop/ android tablet based field IT application that facilities the capturing of real time reliable data on breeding, nutrition and health services delivered at farmer’s doorstep. This system is developed by NDDB.A lots of improvement have been made in the artificial intelligence and automation systems. The livestock farm automation system is the opportunity to tailor operations to the need of each animals. This saves time, requires less labour, improves product quality, increases production, efficiency, accuracy and safety. Considering the requirements, the national dairy development board launched the national dairy plan(NDP) in 2012 to focus on means to grow production and provide producers with greater access to the organised milk processing sectors. Processing of milk through the organised channels will facilitate standardization of product quality and strengthening the direct supply Channel will eliminate the intermediaries, both of which will ensure better.
