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Amid growing income levels and steady rise in the milk consumption in India, the country faces extreme mismatch between the breedable animals and the available cattle feed, hampering the quality and quantity of the milk production, revealed top dairy experts at a national meet in Anand on Tuesday.
At a national workshop on Improving Feed Production Efficiency and Quality Control Aspects of Cattlefeed plants, Parshottam Rupala, Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, expressed the need to increase focus on improving quality of feed for the milch animal.
"With increase in demand for milk, productivity of dairy animals should increase. It is time that we refocus our efforts in providing good quality feed and mineral mixture. And put up concerted efforts in promoting different variants of compound cattle feed for different categories of animals.
As per the data shared by National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), the dairy cooperative network in the country produces about 3.6 million tonnes per annum of cattle feed, against the installed capacity of about 5 mtpa across 70 cattle feed plants. The private sector produces an additional 4.5 million tonnes of feed, which totals up to 8 mtpa - sufficient for only about 8 million cattle out of more than 100 million breed-able animals in the country.
Some issues and areas of concern were raised such as ensuring quality of feed, making available appropriate feed variants, development of skills and capability, modernization & renovation of plants, efficient management of inventory and transparency & integrity in purchases.
The Union Minister also launched NDDB’s Cattle Feed Knowledge Portal, an interactive knowledge platform on various aspects of compound cattle feed production.
Dilip Rath, Chairman, NDDB stated, "India’s model of milk production is based on feeding crop residues and agricultural by-products and using family labour to add value to resources which otherwise have limited alternative economic value."
Adding further he said that feeding balanced ration can help the milch animals produce milk commensurate with their genetic potential with the attendant benefits of lower cost, increased SNF, higher immunity to disease, improved reproductive efficiency and reduced methane emissions.
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