Dairy Farming

In India, dairying is recognized as an instrument for social and economic development. The nation's milk supply comes from millions of small producers, dispersed throughout the rural areas. These farmers maintain an average herd of one or two milch animals, comprising cows and/or buffaloes. The animals' nutritional requirements are largely met by agricultural waste and byproducts (Gupta, 1987). Ample labour and a small land base encourage farmers to practice dairying as an occupation subsidiary to agriculture. While income from crop production is seasonal, dairying provides a stable, year-round income, which is an important economic incentive for the small farmer to take to dairying.

Milk production in India is dominated by small and marginal landholding farmers and by landless labourers who, in aggregate, own about 70 percent of the national milch animal herd (Gupta, 1983). As crop production on 78 percent of the agricultural land still depends on rain, it is prone to both drought and floods, rendering agricultural income uncertain for most farmers. Shackled to subsistence production as a result of a shortage of finance and credit facilities, these farmers become entangled in a strangling debt cycle. The combination of an unfavourable land: person ratio and fragmented landholdings makes it difficult to support large families on crop income alone. It is not surprising that the small farmer and the landless labourer are more often than not victims of moneylenders (Zuvakis, 1979) and of natural calamities. Dairying, as a subsidiary source of income, is a real relief to most of these weaker groups in society. Often one or two milch animals enable these farmers to generate sufficient additional income to break the vicious subsistence agricultural-debt cycle.

Goat Farming

• Small East African Goat
• Galla Goat
• Anglo-Nubians
• German Alpine
• Toggenburg
• Saanen