Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying discusses ways to improve livelihood of farmers with officials of NDDB, GCMMF, Amul Dairy and IRMA

Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying discusses ways to improve livelihood of farmers with officials of NDDB, GCMMF, Amul Dairy and IRMA

11 December 2020, Anand: Shri Giriraj Singh, Hon’ble Union Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying held discussions with the senior officials of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union and IRMA at NDDB, Anand on 11^th December 2020. The focus was primarily on ways to improve livelihood of dairy farmers through different innovative business models.

The Hon’ble Union Minister said that dairying in India is more about livelihoods to millions of farmers than simply a business. Milk is also India’s single largest agricultural commodity in value terms and is more than the combined value of paddy and wheat put together. In line with Hon’ble PM’s dream of doubling farmers’ income, NDDB is promoting technology-driven income generating activities for the dairy farmers. Motivating and involving dairy farmers in multiple streams of income through diverse alternative activities targeted at their livelihood diversification is important for building their economic resilience and welfare.

The Hon’ble Union Minister visited NDDB’s manure management initiative at Anand’s Zakariyapura village. While interacting with the farmers of Zakariyapura village he appreciated them for coming forward and adopting a new technology of biogas plants. These biogas plants are installed by the dairy farmers in their backyard for producing gas to be used as cooking fuel. The bio slurry produced from these biogas plants is primarily used by the farmers in their own field and surplus bio slurry gets sold to other farmers or converted in to organic fertilisers. NDDB’s Sudhan trademark also helps them in creating a brand identity ensuring quality of products.

Lauding the decision of farmers for also venturing into slurry processing and manufacturing of organic fertilizer he stressed market access for sale of surplus slurry produced through a village dairy cooperative Society. It is evident from the last two years’ experience with these biogas plants that significant savings on cooking fuel expenses have been achieved by the users. Moreover, all the women biogas users have reported reduction in drudgery in bringing and burning fuel wood, and related health hazards. The Hon’ble Minister also advised to promote poultry amongst small dairy farmers to enhance their incomes. 

The Hon’ble Union Minister also visited NDDB’s modern Ovum Pick Up & In Vitro Embryo Production (OPU-IVEP) facility. OPU-IVEP is an assisted reproductive technology to multiply elite germ plasm at a faster rate. This R&D facility has been established at NDDB, Anand to standardise the OPU-IVEP technology in cattle and buffaloes and also to train veterinarians for large scale adoption of the technology. He mentioned that if we have to fast track the genetic improvement and productivity of our indigenous dairy breeds, we have to propagate superior germplasm through IVF and Embryo Transfer.

Genetic improvement and raising productivity of the Indian bovine population remained the key essence of various animal breeding projects of NDDB. NDDB has developed a custom genotyping chip “INDUSCHIP” suitable for genotyping of indigenous breeds and crossbreds of HF and Jersey. NDDB has also developed BUFFCHIP’ for genomic selection of Indian buffaloes.