NABARD organized a District Level Workshop on Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme (DEDS) at Sikar last week in order to promote dairy development for creating the sustainable livelihoods in the district through self-employment generation and also help set up modern dairy farms & necessary infrastructure for the clean milk production.
The workshop was attended by the Senior Officers from Commercial Banks, Cooperative Banks, Regional Rural Banks, Small Finance Banks, RSETI, Animal Husbandry Department and Progressive Farmers. J P Bunkar, Chief Executive Officer, Zila Parishad Sikar, Govt. of Rajasthan was the chief guest on the occasion, informs a press release.
While inaugurating the workshop, CEO Zila Parishad J P Bunkar discussed the sustainable livelihood of the farming community with the help of this scheme and advised all the stakeholders to work together for the betterment of farming communities and also doubling the farmers’ income by 2022.
Speaking on the occasion, District Development Manager NABARD, M L Meena said the livestock sector contributes significantly towards livelihoods and the security net for the landless and marginal farmers. About 70 million rural households are engaged in dairying in India with very high proportion being landless, small & marginal farmers covering 80% of the total cow population.
Meena said Govt of India has initiated a number of dairy development schemes in order to meet enhanced demand of milk through domestic sources by laying special emphasis on raising milk production through improved productivity and health of dairy animals and Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme (DEDS) is one of them.
M L Meena added that the scheme would support small dairy units of 2-10 animals, heifer calf rearing units (up to 20 calves), purchase of milking machines, and other dairy processing equipment. Farmers, individual entrepreneurs and groups of organized & un-organized sectors dairy cooperative societies, milk unions, etc. are eligible to seek bank finance and subsidy under the scheme.
“NABARD would provide back ended capital subsidy of 25 percent to the beneficiaries belonging to the general category and 33.33 percent to SC/ST on first come first serve basis” added DDM. He. also urged all bankers to sanction and disburse credit under this scheme in the district.
Besides B L Meena, Managing Director, Sikar Kendriya Sahakari Bank Limited and Subhash Garg, Regional Manager, Baroda Rajasthan Kshetriya Gramin Bank and other bankers also assured support and cooperation for the implementation of the scheme.