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In order to give impetus to the dairy sector in Punjab, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has chalked out a model scheme to be implemented in five districts namely Ludhiana, SBS Nagar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and Amritsar.
The proposed intervention envisaged in the five districts would enhance milk production by 10.7 lakh litres a day and general level credit by Rs 790.95 crore in three years. It is expected that about 1.60 lakh animals will be financed in addition to various dairy related infrastructure in these districts.
Currently, Punjab is the second highest milk producer in the country at 10.01 million metric tonnes per annum(275 lakh litres a day). The total milk production in the state is about 7.58 per cent of the total country’s milk production.
According to state (Punjab) focus paper compiled by NABARD, these five districts offer tremendous potential for improvement of the dairy sector through scientific management and provision of necessary linkages. The objectives of the areas based programme (dairy) through the scheme is to enhance production and marketing of clean milk, capacity building of farmers for undertaking dairy farming and commercial activity, increase income from milk through value addition, scientific production and management of milk through backward and forward integration, better cost management, increase employment opportunities etc.
The state is also targeting to make itself a dairy state during the 12th five year plan by establishing a large number of commercial hi-tech dairy farms. Currently, the state has about 10,000 progressive dairy farmers, with farms varying in size from 10 to 500 high-yielding breeds of cows. Also, the daily production of milk by these farms is about 800,000 to one million litres.
These farmers has ventured into commercial dairy with ‘Punjab Holstein’ — a high-performance cross-bred cows that yield upto 10,000 litres of milk per lactation period of ten months. Currently the state has over 25 lakh cross-bred cows which is highest in the country.
According to NABARD,the state has huge potential for dairy farming. It can be gauged from the fact the total credit potential for the year 2015-16 for dairy development in the state has been estimated at Rs 3525 crore.
