Future aspirations and planning of dairy farmers in India: Horizon 2020

Indian milk production has shown remarkable performance during last four decades. Although the demand for milk is increasing at faster pace in consonance with increasing per capita income, changing dietary pattern, rapid urbanization and burgeoning population, some milk producers do not find milk production as sufficiently remunerative. Keeping these facts in view, a study was conducted to document the present status and future aspirations of dairy farmers in India by 2020. Haryana, Maharashtra and Odisha states were purposively selected from highly, moderately and least dairy progressive states by stratified random sampling, respectively. The total sample size was 900 containing 300 dairy farmers from each state. Study revealed that there is a likelihood of increase in average herd size in all the three states, although number of dairy farmers are likely to decrease. In Haryana, buffalo based system will remain dominating, large scale crossbred and pure indigenous farms will arise. In Maharashtra, farmers showed more inclination towards the crossbred cattle as 44.52% wanted to increase crossbred and 30.14% wanted to carry forward the same. Indigenous cattle will be reared only in extensive system of management. Buffalo based farms will come up in the future. In Odisha, though farmers are interested in crossbred, the dairy farming is highly constrained by lack of skill, input availability especially fodder. Managerial practices in Haryana showed more inclination towards input intensive, in Maharashtra farmers are moving towards intensive system and adoption of improved housing, feeding, finance are likely to appear in Maharashtra. To achieve the future demand, efforts are required to improve the skills of farmers in low progressive states, proper breeding strategies for increasing milk potential of animals, use of local available resources and competitiveness among the farmers.