Dairying is a stable source of income for farmers: Economic Survey 21-22

The agriculture sector has experienced buoyant growth in the past two years. The sector, which is the largest employer of workforce, accounted for a sizeable 18.8 per cent (2021-22) in Gross Value Added (GVA) of the country registering a growth of 3.6 per cent in 2020-21 and 3.9 per cent in 2021-22. Growth in allied sectors including livestock, dairying and fisheries has been the major drivers of overall growth in the sector.

Allied sectors including animal husbandry, dairying and fishing are steadily emerging to be high growth sectors. The livestock sector has grown at a CAGR of 8.15 per cent over the last five years ending 2019-20. As revealed by the latest SAS, the sector has been a stable source of income across groups of agricultural households accounting for about 15 per cent of their average monthly income.

Livestock Sector is an important sub sector of agriculture in the Indian economy. It grew at a CAGR of 8.15 per cent during 2014-15 to 2019-20 (at constant prices). As per the estimates of National Accounts Statistics (NAS) 2020 for sector wise GVA of agriculture and allied sectors, the contribution of livestock in total agriculture and allied sector GVA (at constant prices) has increased from 24.32 per cent (2014-15) to 29.35 per cent (2019-20). Livestock sector contributed 4.35 per cent of total GVA in 2019-20. Development of livestock sector has led to improvement in per capita availability of milk, eggs and meat (Figure 20)

Dairy is the single largest agricultural commodity contributing 5 per cent of the national economy and employing more than 8 crore farmers directly. India is ranked 1st in milk production contributing 23 per cent of global milk production. Milk production in the country has grown at a compound annual growth rate of about 6.2 per cent to reach 209.96 million tonnes in 2020-21 from 146.31 million tonnes in 2014-15 (Figure 21).

The all India per capita availability of milk is 427 grams per day in 2020-21 (provisional). Inter-state variability in milk production and per capita availability of milk during the year 2020-21 is shown in Figure 22.

Recent Initiatives in Animal Husbandry and Dairy Sector:

National Animal Disease Control Programme

The vaccination under the NADCP was started from 31st January, 2020 onwards and got disrupted due to lockdown in the country. FMD vaccination was restarted in May 2020 and the first round of FMD vaccination has been completed in 11 States. During 2021-22, the second phase of the vaccination commenced from July, 2021 and so far 5 crore animals have been vaccinated against FMD and 27.8 lakh animals vaccinated against brucellosis till December,2021-22

Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF)

As on 17.12.2021, a total of 76 projects have been approved under the scheme involving a project cost of ₹ 1802.28 crore. The amount of interest subvention released under the scheme was ₹ 12.74 crore during 2020-21 and ₹ 6.40 crore (as on 17.1.2022) during 2021-22

Other initiatives

Industrial machinery for dairy and Iron & Steel do not figure in the list of top ten import commodities in current year, unlike in April-November, 2019.

Kisan Rail service, was launched on 7th August 2020 to enable speedy movement of perishables including fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fishery and dairy products from production or surplus regions to consumption or deficient regions.

Source : Excerpts from “The Economic Survey 2021-22