The Government is making every possible effort for 360-degree development of the high-revenue earning dairy sector to ensure that it’s not only the world’s largest milk producer, but must also become the biggest dairy exporter.

Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah’s observations made at the Indian Dairy Summit, organised on the third and final day of the Indian Dairy Association’s (IDA) 49th Dairy Industry Conference in Gandhinagar come in the backdrop of various schemes launched in the past few years to accelerate the dairy sector which has a huge potential.

Presently, our milk processing capacity is about 126 million liters per day, which is the highest in the world. We process 22 percent of our total milk production, which benefits the farmer in the form of increased income.

Shah was of the opinion that after the formation of 2 lakh primary milk production societies in the country, 33 percent of the world’s milk production is likely to happen in India by 2033-34 and that for this the Central and State Governments along with cooperative movement need to work together.

 “We have to move forward with the goal that by 2033-34 India should produce 33 percent of the world’s milk with about 330 million metric tonnes milk production every year,” he said.

 “Today India’s share in milk production has gone up to 21 percent and the Amul model has contributed a lot to this. …Our dairy sector has progressed at an annual rate of 6.6 percent in the last decade,” he said. Plans are afoot to establish rural dairies in 2 lakh panchayats in the country and then the growth rate of the dairy sector will reach 13.80 percent. Shah said that in the export of dairy products also products like milk powder, butter and ghee have a major share and there is immense potential in this while a Multistate Cooperative Society set up for exports to be linked with these 2 lakh rural dairies, there is a possibility of increasing exports by 5 times.

In fact, to give a push to the diaries in the sector, Shah in 2021 had launched a scheme ‘Dairy Sahakar’, with an outlay of Rs 5,000 crore, wherein the dairy sector would get loans through National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC). Dairy Sahakar is a first ever and the only dairy focused comprehensive framework leveraging different schemes of the Centre.

Shah also pointed out that looking at the dairy scenario of the world, in 1970 India produced about 6 crore litres of milk per day and it was a milk deficient country. But now, he said, that this production has increased to 58 Crore litres per day in 2022 and the dairy sector has played a huge role in it.

He said that from 1970 to 2022 India’s population has increased 4 times whereas milk production has increased more than 10 times.