Punjab farmers keen on large scale dairy farming

Farmers in Punjab no longer see dairy farming as a part-time venture and instead have taken it up as a full-fledged profession.

"Farmers in the state are now quite keen on running a dairy farm on large-scale, which will help in cutting the cost of milk production considerably and help in getting remunerative rates," Progressive Dairy Farmers Association president Daljeet Singh said here.

Traditionally, Punjab farmers used to have just 10 to 20 cattle per farm. "But now, farmers have started owning dairy farms with 100 to 200 cattle for producing milk in bulk," he said.

Singh expected that in next three years, a single dairy farm would boast of 400 to 500 cattle. Banks have also started showing interest in lending money for big dairy farming projects.

The association has also decided to encourage farmers to go for cattle of breeds such as Holstein-Freisian (HF) in order to push up milk production per animal.

"About 80 per cent of the cattle including cows and buffaloes are cross-breed, which yield just 20 to 25 kg of milk per animal. The milk yield could not be raised until the breed quality is improved," he said.

Punjab has about 19 lakh milk cattle and produces 8.9 million tonne of milk annually.