Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday said that there is a need to focus on implementing technologies which result in enhanced milk production per animal.
The Union Minister after inaugurating Kalki Bhawan and Narmada Hostel of National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal in Haryana said that “India stands first on global milk product scenario. An important point to ponder is that despite increase in total milk production in the country, milk productivity per animal is far less than the average in developed dairy nations, he said.
He said that the consumption of milk and milk products has increased in both rural and urban food baskets. In the past decades, there has been an increase in the consumption of milk and milk products in rural and urban areas by 29 and 26 per cent, respectively.
The consumer preferences in India are diversifying towards high value added dairy products such as dairy beverages, fermented milk products, western dairy products, functional dairy products, and packaged traditional dairy products.
Market growth rate for some of these products is in the range of 15-20 per cent. Keeping in view possibilities and trends, it is important that we found newer wage and means and technologies for processing into different dairy products, he added.
Talking about challenges in agriculture, he said that we have to meet challenges such as reducing availability of quality water, nutrient deficiency in soils, climate change, farm energy availability, loss of biodiversity, emergence of new pests and diseases, fragmentation of farms, rural-urban migration, coupled with new Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and trade regulations.
The Union Minister said that increased fertilizer use that was essential for increasing the yield levels has begun to create soil problems due to unbalanced use of fertilizers. Keeping this vision in view, the Government has launched the soil health card scheme. Under Soil Health Card Scheme all the farmers of the country will be given soil health card by 2017.
We do hope that by 2050, India will be treated as one the top developed country out of three, he added.
He added that the Centre has launched Parampragat Krishi Vikas Yojana for the first time so as to promote organic farming. During 2015-16, a sum of Rs 300 crore had been allocated that 8000 clusters have been formulated as yet.