Sreelatha Menon: And a Right to Fodder?

While the govt works on food security, high fodder rates threaten survival of both cattle and owners

The Right to Food Act, when it is implemented, may not ensure that people get a proper meal every day. For even if it manages to provide subsidised grain, dairy farmers would still find it hard to keep themselves and their cattle alive. A milch animal is often the only source of income in a family, sustaining five to six people. Also, cattle is often the only possession of millions of landless labourers.

Hence, fodder translates into food for the farmer too.

If rice under the Right to Food Act is available for Rs 3 a kg, a family would still have to pay about Rs 10 for one kg fodder, as prices have been rising rapidly. If the price was Rs 7,500 per metric tonne a year ago, it was Rs 9,500 per metric tonne early this year.

A buffalo eats five-six kg fodder every day, roughly half its daily yield. In Rajasthan, drought and scarcity of fodder and water have led to many families letting their cattle die. This was last year, at the peak of the drought. It is another matter that no one counts cattle starvation deaths.

In Andhra Pradesh, a recent report says livestock owners now buy pregnant Murra buffaloes from Haryana, known for their high yield, and sell in Kerala after they have milked it. This is because they cannot feed them for another six months before they can be inseminated.

Activist K S Gopal, a member of the Central Employment Council, says farmers should be taught to make brickets out of fodder to store and transport it to places where there are shortages.

Gopal, who experimented with grain banks, which let members borrow and return in kind, says fodder banks and sale through the public distribution system (PDS) are worth looking at in states where scarcity is chronic.

M S Swaminathan, a member of the National Advisory Council, has in the past asked for the setting up of a Fodder Commission. Maybe he may now go a step forward and ask for inclusion of fodder in the Public Distribution System.

Farmer activists like Vijay Jaywantia believe subsidising fodder cultivation can draw more people to grow fodder crops like sorghum, maize and bajra.

Without easily-available fodder and without incentives to grow fodder, milk will get as scarce as the livestock farmer, not to speak of the cattle.

This will be an adverse development for a country where one-third of self-help group-based entrepreneurship programmes has to do with dairy farming and which has the largest livestock population of 200 million.

According to agricultural economist Bhaskar Goswami, indigenous varieties of cattle, which eat less and are more dependent on grazing, ought to be revived. The Tharparkar, an indigenous breed from Rajasthan, known for the sweetness of its milk, has vanished, replaced by cross-bred varieties which give higher yield but also eat more fodder, says Goswami.

The survival of the dairy farmer is today linked with the survival of the cattle and availability of fodder. The sooner the link between man and animal is recognised, the better it will be for the dairy farmer and milk production in the country.