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While the big dairies are grappling with a surplus situation in Andhra Pradesh, small dairy units that cater to a smaller section of consumers and to bigger dairies, are facing different but equally difficult challenges.
They are facing a tough situation as cost of production has shot up significantly due to severe power cuts, particularly in the morning times, increase in prices of cattle and scarcity of fodder.
A few hundred milking, cooling and processing units in and around Hyderabad are severely impacted with these multiple problems.
The official power cut at mandal headquarters is put at six hours a day.
In villages, power is being supplied only three hours in day time.
Most of the power cuts are happening in the morning when the dairies go for milking machines.
The recent Nilam cyclone had wiped out 1.90 lakh tonnes of fodder, creating severe shortage of animal feed.
“Most of these dairies are located outside of the State Capital and other urban centres. They are connected to the rural feeders,” Bhasker Reddy, President of Indian Dairy Association (Andhra Pradesh Chapter), told Business Line .
It is small dairy farmers who are impacted by this most. Many of the milking machines, priced Rs 75,000-2 lakh, are idle due to the power shutdown, Bala Reddy, who represents the Dairy Farmers’ Association, said.
The farmers are in a dicey situation. If they want the machines and processing units to work, they should deploy generators. If they do, it will only increase the cost of production further.
To reach consumers on time, milking operations are generally carried out around 3-4 am in the morning and again 12 hours later.
The option of manual labour is expensive. If labour costs were Rs 800 a month six years ago, it is a minimum of Rs 8,500 now, he said.
Bala Reddy, however, said this was not a new problem. “But we face this in the summer. It is only December now and we are saddled with this issue,” he adds.
An extra cost of Rs 2,000 a month has to be borne on diesel alone by a small farmer. Similarly, with farmers not getting the 7-hour power supply, production of green fodder has been effected. Dry fodder in markets cost Rs 6-7 a kg, which drastically increases the fodder costs for cattle, he said.
The Progressive Dairy Farmers Association has made a representation to treat dairy on par with agriculture to get some benefits.
>kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in
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