Addressing 16th convocation ceremony of National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal in Haryana on Saturday Union Minister of Agriculture Radha Mohan Singh said that for the last 20 years India has been the largest producer of milk in the world.
Singh lauded the role played by NDRI in this connection and said it is catering to the technical and human resource requirements of the dairy sector.
Shri Singh said that the milk production has increased by 20% between 2014 and 2017 and per capita availability of milk has risen by 15.6%. Similarly, the income of dairy farmers has increased by 23.77% between 2011-14 and 2014-17.
The Government is committed towards ensuring more income to farmers, uplifting the economically backward sections of society, youth employment, better education and healthcare, he underlined.
Union Minister said that the Government has initiated the “National Mission on Bovine Productivity” in order to help the benefits of animal husbandry schemes reach the farmers directly. The Government, under this scheme, is spending Rs 825 crores for genetic upgradation, he stated.
Singh said that Budget 2018 has laid special emphasis on animal husbandry. In the previous budget, the Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) was set up with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) with a corpus of Rs 10,881 crore. This year, the Government, with a corpus of Rs2,450 crore, has set up an Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund (AHIDF) for financing infrastructure requirement of animal husbandry sector.
“In order to meet the working capital requirement of dairy farmers, the facility of Kisan Credit Card has been extended by the government to the fisheries and livestock farmers”, he said.
Agriculture Minister said that these initiatives of the Government are intended to increase the potential of self employment in livestock through entrepreneurship. Lauding NDRI Singh said it is committed to training the youth so that they become job-providers instead of job-seekers. He expressed satisfaction over the BPD unit of NDRI in training entrepreneurs.
