Growth in dairy is tremendous over last few decades & shall remain mainstay of Indian agriculture
Lets look at the importance of dairy in overall Agriculture sector and how over the years, it has become the largest & fastest growing segment within Agriculture as well as overall GDP of India. Summarised in 4 charts below:
While agriculture as a part of overall GDP of the country has halved, decreasing from 34% in 1980 to around 17%; dairy as a part of agricultural GDP has doubled from 14% to 27% within the same period.
Livestock sector, mainly driven by dairying is one of the fastest growing segment within overall GDP, growing at around 8.2%.
The value of milk produced in the country is higher than combined value of largest crops viz. Wheat, Rice & sugar or all cereals together.
Therefore, milk remains the single largest employer & revenue generator for rural India and unlike crops, is a steady stream of cash generation round the year, helping farmers meet their daily expenses.
With such a huge scale and impact on rural India, dairy truly deserves better treatment from the policy makers! While there's much made out of MSP for Rice & Wheat or new farm laws impacting farmers (which is rightly objected for few grey-areas of the legislation); the level of importance accorded to dairying is hardly anything. With India being largest producer as well as consumer of milk and poised to become milk bowl of the World, appropriate attention & policy measures are required in right earnest at this time to provide right direction to the industry.
Shall discuss on policy measures in next post.
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