Union Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh has said that agriculture and dairy business complement each other for the social and economic upliftment of cattle farmers. To achieve this objective, it is essential to have good quality livestock breed in order to increase production. Speaking on the occasion of “National Milk Day” he said that under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM), 10 semen centres have been identified for the production of Sex Sorted Semen for the production of more female animals. Proposals for two centres, in Uttarakhand and Maharashtra, have been approved. The foundation stone of sex sorted semen centre in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand was laid in June 2018. Besides, INDUSCHIP has been developed for genomic selection of indigenous breeds and 6000 dairy animals have been genetically evaluated using it. He informed that under the RGM, 20 Gokul Grams in 13 states at a total cost of Rs 197 crore have been approved. Apart from this, Under the Pashu Sanjivni component of the scheme, 9 crore milch animals are being identified using UID (Unique Identification Device).
He said that the credit for India becoming the world’s largest milk producer goes to livestock farmers and the various schemes of the Indian government. He further added that 20 Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) centres are being established in the country and proposal of 19 centres have been approved so far. These centres are producing 3000 high genetic merit bulls of indigenous bovine breeds.Shri Singh added that in an effort to double farmers’ income, the government launched e-pashuhaat (https://epashuhaat.gov.in/) portal in November 2016. The portal is playing a crucial role in connecting farmers, breeders and other agencies to trade in disease-free germplasm, namely live animals, frozen semen and embryos. Now, a mobile application - e-pashuhat (GPMS Transportal) - has been created and integrated with UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) application. Farmers can download UMANG app on their mobile phone from Google Play store and Apple App store. They can now know the availability of disease-free germplasm services within 100KM radius of their location. So far, e-pashuhaat (GPMS Transportal) App has been automatically downloaded and available for 1 crore registered UMANG users.
The Minister informed that this year a new scheme the Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) has been initiated by the government. It aims to benefit 95 lakh milk producers in 50,000 villages and provide both direct and indirect employment to many skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers. He said that under the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme, there is a provision to provide financial assistance for providing self employment opportunities in various activities from milk production to marketing. Under this, 3, 31,314 dairy units have been established and the government has provided subsidy of Rs 1401.96 crore. Apart from this, World Bank-funded National Dairy Plan Phase-I, National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) etc. are being operationalised by the state governments through milk cooperative / federations related to the state.