Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, Radha Mohan Singh has 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 also been approved.
In addition, 20 Gokul Grams in 13 states at a total cost of Rs 197 crore have been approved by the Centre. Apart from this, Under the Pashu Sanjivni scheme, 9 crore milch animals are being identified using UID (Unique Identification Device).
Also, INDUSCHIP has been developed for genomic selection of indigenous breeds and 6000 dairy animals have been genetically evaluated using it.
Now 20 Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) centres are also 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.
The government launched e-pashuhaat (https://epashuhaat.gov.in/) portal in November 2016. To connect farmers, breeders and other agencies to trade in disease, free germplasm, live animals, frozen semen and embryos. A mobile application - e-pashuhaat (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 and know the availability of disease-free germplasm services within 100km radius of their location. So far, e-pashuhaat application has been automatically downloaded and available for 1 crore registered UMANG users.
All these measures and steps have been taken in an effort to double farmer’s income. Union Agriculture Minister, Radha Mohan Singh believes that agriculture and dairy business complement each other for the social and economic upliftment of cattle farmers.
So, to achieve this objective it is essential to have good quality livestock breed in order to increase production. Therefore, the Minister informed that this year a new scheme, 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 a 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 operationalized by the state governments through milk cooperative/federations related to the state.
Animal Husbandry Secretary Tarun Shridhar said, “He is confident that the country’s milk production would touch 250 million tonne by 2022 and we will achieve this target easily.”
