Ludhiana, June 27
The non-availability of good quality cattle and poultry feed, lack of infrastructure for marketing dairy and poultry products and their unremunerative prices and a large population of unproductive animals are the major constraints in the development of dairy farming in Punjab. These views were expressed by members of the PAU Animal Husbandry Farmers Committee at their meeting held on the university campus here today under the chairmanship of Dr Kirpal Singh Aulakh, Vice-Chancellor, Punjab Agricultural University.
In his opening remarks, Dr Aulakh said that Punjab was producing 10 per cent of the milk in the country and the milk in Punjab was the cheapest in the world. Dr Aulakh emphasised that in order to compete with the developed countries like Denmark in the international market, there was an urgent need to increase productivity of our dairy farm animals so that we could produce more milk from lesser number of animals and decrease the cost of production. Dr Aulakh also suggested that the efficiency of milk plants in the cooperative sector needs to be increased which at present is only 30 per cent. Dr Aulakh also expressed concern over the low sale price of milk to the farmers.
Two progressive dairy farmers of the state, Mr Iqbal Singh and Mr Randhir Singh Rode, who returned from Denmark after taking training in dairy farming, said that in that country the farming was personally carried out by the farmers and their wives and there was no dependence on hired labour. There was also high scale adoption of scientific techniques among the dairy farmers and they were laying more stress on production of milk and vegetables without the use of any chemicals. After schooling, the Denmark youth is given practical training on farms for three to four hours. The availability of loan at an interest rate between 4 and 8 per cent was a great incentive to the dairy farmers, whereas our farmers had to pay a high rate of interest. As a result of the scientific policy, Denmark dairy farmers did not have to feed the unproductive animals.
A progressive farmer, Mr Ranjit Singh Sidhu from Malerkotla, requested the scientists to develop a poultry shed so as to minimise the impact of heat on poultry birds during summer. He also suggested development of a machine for grading eggs. Mr Jaswant Singh Natt, a progressive dairy farmer and former president of the Punjab Kisan Club, suggested that farmers should market their milk produce directly to the consumers.
The PAU scientists suggested that instead of purchasing low quality feed at high price from the market, the farmers should organise themselves into groups and mix their own cattle feed by purchasing the ingredients from the market. This will be less costly as well as will be of better quality. The farmers also suggested that the meat plant at Dera Bassi should be operated to its full capacity to solve the problem.
