The Hindu Business Line : Regional dairy development meet from Wednesday

In a bid to strengthen mutual co-operation in the areas of dairy development and animal husbandry, a regional meeting of the Ministers concerned will be held here on November 21 and 22.

The meeting will be attended by the Chief Ministers of Goa and Puducherry, and Dairy Development and Animal Husbandry Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Puducherry and Maharashtra.

The Kerala Minister for Dairying, Animal Husbandry, Food and Civil Supplies, Mr C. Divakaran, said here on Saturday that the country had been experiencing shortage of milk in the last few years, despite the great strides made by it in milk production over the last four decades.

The country now boasts 13 per cent of the total global production of milk and 57 per cent of the total production in Asia. It is also home for the largest population of cattle in the world with 185 million cows and 120 million buffaloes.

The distribution network for milk and milk products comprises 70,000 village cooperatives across the country, which, in turn, are federated into 170 district unions of milk producers. Besides, there are 22 State cooperative dairy federations in the country.

But the inadequacy of fodder, the lack of co-ordination among the various agencies in the field and the incompatibility between the animal husbandry policies of the neighboring States have led to a situation of shortage. Also, the results of the research and development activities had not reached the dairy farmers, the Minister said.

Mr Divakaran noted that there had been excess production of milk in certain climates in some of the States, which was not processed for later use or supplied to the States suffering from shortage of milk. There had to be mechanism for all the States to come together and work out ways to complement each other for the full utilisation of the milk produced in the country, he added.

The State Economic Survey has pointed out that Kerala is facing a crisis in the area of milk production. In 2001-2002, the production of milk in the State was 27.18 lakh tonnes, which came down to 20.27 lakh tonnes in 2004-05. However, there has been a gradual growth in production over the last two years. Still, the State was facing a shortage of 20 lakh litres of milk a day, the Minister said.

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