Vast opportunities exist today for dairy entrepreneurs and in order to concretize these opportunities and help double the income of dairy farmers, Rs 51,077 crore is needed to operationalize the National Action Plan (Vision-2024), Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shri Radha Mohan Singh said at the inauguration ceremony of Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) in New Delhi today. Shri Singh said that as a result of the announcement of Union Budget 2017-18, the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries (DADF) started the Dairy Processing & Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) with an outlay of Rs 10881 crore. Under this, the first installment of Rs 440 crore is being given to the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) The Union Agriculture Minister said that with this scheme, 95,00,000 farmers in about 50,000 villages will be benefitted. In addition to this, many skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers will get employment, directly and indirectly. Additional milk processing capacity of 126 lakh litre per day, milk drying capacity of 210 MT per day, milk chilling capacity of 140 lakh litre per day shall be created. Under this scheme, milk cooperatives will be provided financial assistance of Rs 8004 crore in the form of a loan at 6.5% interest, which will be reimbursed over a period of 10 years. The government has also given a provision of interest subsidy on loans. Till now, 15 sub-projects with total approved outlay of Rs 1148.61 crore pertaining to States namely, Karnataka (Rs. 776.39 crore – 5 sub-projects), Punjab (Rs.318.01 crores – 4 sub-projects) and Haryana (Rs. 54.21 crore – 6 sub-projects) have been sanctioned so far.
Shri Singh informed that implementation of the World Bank-funded National Dairy Plan Phase-I scheme is also being done by the NDDB through the state government’s cooperative milk organizations/milk federations. The government is now implementing this scheme in 18 states from the earlier 14 states. On the other hand, the implementation of the National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) is being done by the state’s cooperative/milk federations. Under this scheme, an assistance of Rs 560.46 crore in 2014-18 was given for the development of cooperative milk committees, incentives to increase the number of milk producers and increase processing and refrigeration capacity.
Union Agriculture Minister further said that in order to increase production, under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, 10 semen centers have been identified for the production of Sex Sorted Semen for the production of more female animals. Also, 20 Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) centers are being set up for the production of high genetic merit bulls of indigenous bovine breeds. Besides, INDUSCHIP has been developed for genomic selection of indigenous breeds and 6000 dairy animals have been genetically evaluated using INDUSCHIP.
The Minister also informed that under the flagship scheme Rashtriya Gokul Mission, the current government till March 2018 has approved projects worth Rs 1600 crore in 29 states out of which Rs 686 crores has been released. 20 Gokul Grams are also being established under this scheme. Apart from this, for the conservation of indigenous breeds, two National Kamdhenu Breeding Centres, one in Andhra Pradesh at Chintaladevi and other in Madhya Pradesh at Itarsi are being established. Shri Singh also asserted that the e-Pashuhaat portal is a landmark initiative, launched in 2016. It is playing an important role in connecting breeders and farmers. The Minister appealed to the members present to speed up efforts to achieve the goal by 2022.
