It’s a shocker for Odisha. ‘White Revolution’ in the State has apparently turned out to be a fig leaf only as cattle rearing in Odisha is more for tilling land than milking. The much-hyped ‘Operation Flood’ in Odisha with around 11 cooperatives - numerically equivalent to that with Punjab - is seemingly floundering to attain its size and scale with fewer cows and more bullocks at hand. The recently released National Sample Survey (NSS) report on livestock ownership in Odisha laid bare the truth on State’s dairy farming - a game-changer economic activity for low-income State like Odisha.
Sample the reality-check. Odisha’s per day milk production in 2014-15 (up to November) stands at around 5, 925 tonnes. In contrast, the per day milk production in Andhra Pradesh stood at 38, 766 tonnes in 2014-15. Bihar produces 24,780 tonnes milk daily, while Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand with around 3,500 T and 5, 400 T respectively fall behind Odisha. The reason behind lower daily milk production than Odisha in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh is they have more bullocks and fewer cows than Odisha has.
According to recently released NSS livestock report, average number of adult cows owned by households in Odisha stood at around 51 per cent, whereas bullocks were owned by over 62 per cent. Buffalo rearing is negligible in Odisha with around 5 per cent households only rearing it for milk purpose. Similarly, Chhattisgarh having an average proportion of three bullocks owned to two cows and Jharkhand with two bullocks to only one cow fare poorer than Odisha. Buffalo rearing by households in the two States for milk is more or less equivalent to that of Odisha.
Comparably, Andhra Pradesh - the biggest exporter of milk to Odisha - has adult cows owned by a whopping 94 per cent households and bullocks by mere 16 per cent households. Moreover, 44 per cent households in AP rear buffalo for milk purpose. Similarly in Bihar, over 48 per cent own cows compared to only 12 per cent owning bullocks and over 23 per cent household owning buffalo for milk production. The ratio of cows to bullocks owned is in the higher range for other top milk producing States like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
These realities on the ground show how the White Revolution launched in Odisha with much fanfare some three-four decades ago has fallen pale. The per capita milk availability in Odisha has seemingly remained stagnant as it touched around 120gms/day in 2014-15 up from mere 117gms/day in 2013-14. In contrast, the per capita availability in Andhra Pradesh was at over 400gms/day and Bihar had at around 200gms/day.
The primary reason, experts feel, behind ‘White Revolution’ struggling here is over 85 per cent of the cattle in Odisha is owned by small and marginal farmers, whose poor economic conditions compel them to give priority to cultivation for sustenance than dairy farming. Moreover, lack of any fiscal support to boosting dairy farming in Odisha aborts the huge potential it has. While Government has a host of sops for cultivation, there is little for dairy farming. Significantly, the lack of any calibrated dairy policy in State reflects very poor of the administration, rued a former FARD Secretary.