Punjab turns to dairy farming, milks profit

Seeing the consistent increase in demand for milk in Punjab, more farmers are taking up commercial dairy farming in the state and, in the past three years, the number of commercial dairy farms has increased from about 300 to around 1,000 currently.

The growth of dairy farms has been driven by concessional rate of interest by banks (about 3 per cent lower than the normal rate of interest) coupled with the appreciation in the land holdings of the farmers that they mortgage for borrowing funds from banks.

A senior government official said the dairy sector in Punjab was growing above 4 per cent per annum, almost double of the growth rate of agriculture. He added that the insurance cover offered by the companies for livestock to dairy farmers, through cooperative societies, has also helped in the growth of dairy farming.

Punjab has about 3.6 million buffaloes and about 800,000 cows currently. But in a reversal of trend, more farmers are opting for cow milk due to higher yeild. A buffalo can yield a maximum of 2,000-2,500 litres of milk in a 10 month cycle but a cow can fetch a farmer 5,000-6,000 litre of milk during the same duration.

Daljit Singh, the president of the Punjab progressive farmers assocition said, "The milk is procured on the basis of fat content and we get a remuneration of Rs 11-14 per litre of milk. Buffaloes go dry in winter so all those farmers who are diversifying towrads dairy farming are opting for cows."

The milk plants in Punjab procure about 230 tonne of milk everyday and the market has been growing rapidly.

Of late, Reliance Fresh also entered into market with its processing plant at Doraha. Reliance tied up with an existing plant having a capacity of 60,000 litre per day. Punjab has 60 milk plants and most of them are operational.

According to an official in the dairy development department, the existing plants can expand capacities to meet the growing market and there is no need to add more processing plants.

The latest enterant in the milk processing market of Pujab was Dumax (Jagraon) that was acquired by the Wockhardt.