Dairy industry may up farmers' incomes

Mumbai: Seeking higher state support for the dairy industry, which can boost farmers income, National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) chairman T. Nanda Kumar, said the government can achieve the Prime Minister’s aim of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022 only if their income was augmented by dairy income.

“Land and agriculture produce cannot fetch this kind of income, and especially in the drought prone areas like Vidarbha, Marathwada or in Andhra. But dairying could provide the farmer with sustenance, he told this newspaper. The dairy industry currently contributes to around 33 per cent of the value of agriculture GDP in India, and is growing at the rate of four per cent in the last 10 years compared to all the other crops.

The NDDB is pursuing the producer-model where farmers’ cooperatives are turned into companies under the Company Law, which would enable them to invest in agriculture. But it needs infrastructure like a distribution network.

It has worked successfully in Banaskantha in Gujarat where the Anand (Amul) Dairy functions and in Andhra Pradesh where there is an all-womens cooperative of 56,000 women who contributed a total of Rs 4 crore. Mr Nanda Kumar pointed out, that the cooperative sector in agriculture has been growing over by 19.6 per cent compounded annual growth rate while the processed milk industry has been growing at 22 per cent.

Stating that high interest rates are a problem and affect the viability of the sector, he said some incentives are needed from the government to overcome this problem. “We have brought the need for cheap funds to the notice of the government and are in touch with the finance ministry. We have suggested using the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund which has a larger corpus than that of Nabard,” he said.