Union Minister for Home Affairs and Co-operation Amit Shah announced to start of multi-purpose primary agricultural credit societies in every panchayat which will do the work of distribution of Dairy, Farmers Producer Organisation, Agriculture and Gas Production along with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). The announcement was made on October 7 at the Eastern and North-Eastern Co-operative Dairy Conclave 2022 in Gangtok, Sikkim.
Additionally, there will be arrangements for Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) distribution. It will provide arrangements for petrol pumps, storage, and marketing where ever required.
Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) will also work to connect the villages of the hill state like Sikkim with the whole world through Public Call Offices in the village. He said that the Ministry of Cooperation has planned such multi-purpose and multi-dimensional PACS.
Shah said that for centuries, animal husbandry has played a very important role in the social and economic development of India, and once upon a time, rivers of milk and ghee used to flow in our country. Earlier animal husbandry was a very important industry in our country but even after the independence, no one paid attention to it and gradually it ended.
He added that the gas produced from dairy helps the environment, cow dung helps in natural farming and natural farming improves human health. He said that the dairy system should be cooperative because if it is private, women will get only a few rupees, also in the cooperative system, the profit earned will be directly deposited in the bank account of the woman.
Deliberating on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of the dairy sector very well, Shah noted small landless farmers with one to three cattle to be the strength.
"Our weakness in this sector is that almost 70 percent of the milk goes to the market in an unorganized way, due to which the farmer does not get its fair price. It is a weakness as well as a challenge that we should bring down the quantity of this 70 percent milk going into the market unorganized to 20," he added.
Dairy is an Rs. 130 crore market in India. "In our neighboring countries, milk products come from Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Australia which have very high transportation costs. Thus, we have a huge opportunity to deliver milk to countries like Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka," Shah said.
To explore this world market, the government is setting up a multi-state cooperative, which will act as an export house. It will work to export the milk product of our cooperative dairy in the world and bring profit to the farmer. He said that the domestic dairy market of Rs. 13 lakh crore is also a big opportunity in front of us. The government is committed to increasing this market from 13 lakh crore to 30 lakh crore by 2027.
Further, he claimed that the Government of India has formulated several animal husbandry schemes, and in the last 7 years the budget of Rs. 2000 crore has been increased to Rs.6000 crore.
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