Improving livestock breeding

Synopsis: The facts and schemes relating to different livestock sector and the expected benefit out of it.

Introduction

Livestock breeding in India has been largely unorganised because of which there have been gaps in forward and backward integration across the value chain.

Government has revised “Rashtriya Gokul Mission” and “National Livestock Mission” (NLM) to adress issues in this sector.

What are the facts regarding Livestock sector and its impact?

Facts-Approximately 200 million Indians are involved in livestock farming, including around 100 million dairy farmers. Roughly 80% bovines in the country are low on productivity and are reared by small and marginal farmers.

Impact-It impacts the quality of livestock that is produced and in turn negatively impacts the return on investment for livestock farmers.

What steps are taken by Government to improve ‘Livestock sector’ and its ‘farmers’?

– To enhance the productivity of cattle, the “Rashtriya Gokul Mission” was initiated in 2014 with a focus on the genetic upgradation of the bovine population through widespread initiatives on artificial insemination, sex-sorted semen, and in-vitro fertilization.

– Web applications like e-Gopala that provide real-time information to livestock farmers on the availability of disease-free germplasm in relevant centres, veterinary care, etc.

– The revised version of the “Rashtriya Gokul Mission”(RGM) and “National Livestock Mission” (NLM) incentivises entrepreneurship development and breed improvement in cattle, buffalo, poultry, sheep, goat, and piggery by providing incentives to individual entrepreneurs, farmer producer organisations, SHG’s, companies(section 8) among others.

State governments would be given incentive for breed improvement infrastructure.

Components under revised “RGM” and “NLM”:

Breed multiplication farm component of “RGM”-provide for capital subsidy up to ₹200 lakh for setting up breeding farm with at least 200 milch cows/ buffalo using latest breeding technology.

Breed multiplication farm is expected to result in the employment of 1 lakh farmers.

Poultry entrepreneurship programme of the NLM-capital subsidy up to ₹25 lakh for setting up of a parent farm with a capacity to rear 1,000 chicks.The rural entrepreneur running the hatchery will be supplying chicks to the farmers for further rearing.

Sheep and goat entrepreneurship, there is a provision of capital subsidy of 50% up to 50 lakh.

Each entrepreneur will get animals with high genetic merit from the Central/State government university farms.

For piggery, the NLM will provide 50% capital subsidy of up to ₹30 lakh.

The revised scheme of ‘NLM’ coupled with the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund has the potential to dramatically enhance the productivity and traceability standards of our livestock besides it has huge potential for employment generation.

Source: This post is based on the article “Improving livestock breeding” published in “The Hindu” on 19th October 2021.