Hit by losses, farmers take to dairy business in Gurdaspur

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, June 11

Unable to cope with a stagnant wheat and paddy MSP and with unseasonal rains destroying their crop for the third year in succession, farmers of this border district no longer take dairy farming as a part-time venture.

The exercise is being undertaken by hundreds of farmers as a full-time source of income. It is helping them in coming out of the “unprofitable” wheat and the water guzzling paddy cycle, which agriculture experts have been advocating for long.

The state has a total of 19 lakh milch cattle and produces approximately 9 million tonnes of milk annually.

“Traditionally, in this district, farmers used to keep 15-20 cattle but now things have changed. Disappointed with the diminishing returns from wheat and paddy, farmers have now started dairy farms with 50 to 100 cattle for producing milk in bulk,” said a dairy farmer, PS Kondal. He is happy as he is now earning money on a daily basis unlike when he was into growing crops. The story is similar for hundreds of other dairy farmers whose produce is either sold directly in the market or used by the local milk plant Verka.

“Why work under somebody, when I have the potential to offer jobs to others,” says Harbans Singh Dala, who has 55 head of cattle. “The occupation demands hard labour but it has paid off handsomely,” he said.

“The state government, apparently in an attempt to start a white revolution, has decided to reformulate the loan policy for dairy farmers through the state’s co-operative banks. These steps have been taken after getting relevant inputs from the Punjab State Farmers Commission and the Progressive Dairy Farms Association,” said an officer.

He said the state Dairy Development Board was contributing with heavily subsidised loans for such ventures.

“The most significant decision pertains to enhancing the loan amount being given to prospective dairy farmers from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. We needed a fresh loan policy to attract people, particularly those in rural areas, towards dairy farming. A loan of Rs 50 lakh is being given for setting up modern dairy farms which will have at least ten milch animals. This will also include the expenditure a farmer will be incurring towards the purchase of farm equipment,” said Des Raj Dhugga, CPS(Animal Husbandry).