DAIRY FARMING AMONG WOMEN FARMERS

IN NARLA BLOCK, KALAHANDI

A Case Study

Submitted By

Aishwarya Baral

1
 ABSTRACT
Care India believes in woman empowerment, which is the process of building womens
capacity to be self-reliant and to develop her sense of inner strength. It is established
beyond doubt that women always participated in dairy and animal husbandry activities in
addition to their daily household chores. Women spent more time than men in dairy
production activities. Training is one of the important aspects of empowerment, which can
enhance knowledge, improve skill and change the attitude of rural women. Selection of
breed, compounding balanced feed using locally available ingredients, feeding during
pregnancy, health care and banking and insurance are the most preferred areas of training
in dairy farming.
Key words: Dairy Farming, Training impact, Women empowerment.
Here we are introducing Mrs. Hemabati Devi from Bhanpur village. She has a different
perspective towards life and in her words- What do people think- Arent we human! We are
woman, woman of blood and flesh. Its normal that we will suffer, very normal that woman
will cry. The day I was born, my mother thought she would not survive. But she survived
though she had nothing to eat that day. I grew up hungry but that is okay, my mother said, I
became used to hunger since I was inside my mothers belly.

Somehow this lady grew up and married at an age of 16 years to Mr. Prana Krushna Pradhan
of Narla Block, Kalahandi. She struggled a lot throughout her life and worked hard in every
possible way to earn her livelihood. She has a supportive husband who believes in woman
empowerment. They have two daughters and one son, so they are a five members family.
Initially the primary occupation of this family was agriculture; Hemabati has been associated
with an initiative by Care India since 2015 and in a participatory mode has taken up dairy
farming as their secondary livelihood option. The couple bought a crossbreed cow on
December, 2016 at Rs.32000/-.

Under the Technical Assistance and Research for Indian Nutrition and Agriculture
(TARINA), Care India is providing technical assistance to make agricultural projects
nutrition sensitive and developing evidence driven pathway to policy reforms that promote
availability and affordability of a more nutritious food system. TARINA also helps to build
capacity and leadership to institutionalize nutrition sensitive agriculture in India. The animal
husbandry initiative in TARINA project focuses on Dairy farming, Poultry rearing and goat
farming. The main purpose is to create awareness among women farmers about the nutritional
value of animal sourced food item and improved methods of rearing to ensure a greater cost
benefit ratio for the community. Cow milk is a rich source of vitamin- D, potassium and
protein. so its a must in their daily diet chart.

With social mobilisation and technical guidance for women empowerment, an initiative by
Care India, a women milk cooperative society named as SURABHI was set up in village
Bhanpur. Along with 70 women farmers, Hemabati is a member in the cooperative society.
Earlier Hemabati used to collect only 24ltrs of milk per day from her crossbreed cow, because
she never practised feeding her cow with green grass. But after being a part of dairy farming
initiative, she replaced cows feed from dry grass to green grass with proper recommended

2
concentrate. With technical input from Care India she took up green grass cultivation in 0.3
acres of her land during the Rabi season. She was able to cultivate 15kg of green grass over a
period of 3 months. She provides a supplementary diet of at least 10 kg of green grass in the
cows feed that gradually increased the milk production and made that to 28ltrs per day.

Care India personnel conducted training programs frequently which was helpful for the
women dairy farmer to get an idea about the dairy farming and it will also increase the level
of knowledge, which in turn reflects into better livestock farming and management and
ultimately increases livestock production. Hemabati and all other dairy farm women will be
able to adopt all the important scientific dairy management practices like rearing crossbreed
cows, colostrum feeding, deworming of livestock, periodic health check-up, feeding pregnant
and milking cows etc. Care India team not only emphasizes on training but also on marketing
of dairy products. In November, 2016 OMFED agreed to receive the collected milk of Narla
Block. On the 1st day around 85 litres of milk was collected and sold to OMFED at a price of
Rs.28/-, but on 2nd and 3rd day the price dropped to Rs.22/- and Rs.21/- gradually as per the
quality of the milk. The dropping price of milk brought attention of the whole team. After a
careful observation and discussion with the farmers it was found that, the farmers lacked
knowledge on bi-axis evaluation of milk quality by OMFED. Keeping in view this particular
constraint the training module was upgraded and a session on minimum support price and fair
average quality was introduced in the curriculum to build capacity of women farmers on this
particular issue. After going through this capacity building the women were able to correlate
the milk price with the solid not fat and the fat content of the milk and started preparing
themselves to modify the way of the livestock to fetch a better price.

The women farmers were facilitated to avail information from government officer such as
Block veterinary officer (BVO) about how to improve dairy farming in village level. They
provided technical support on the balanced diet of animals, deworming, clean milk
production, maintenance of cattle shed, purchase of animals, periodic vaccination etc. It was
also discussed that preferences of the farm women for method, duration, interval, time and
place of training should be kept in mind while planning training programmes. Efforts should
be made to reduce the time lag in adoption by providing financial and technical assistants.

Impact: After understanding the importance of dairy farming, Hemabati as well as other
women members of SURABHI will be equipped to support their household financially.
Proper training in selection of breed, compounding balanced feed using locally available
ingredients, feeding during pregnancy, health care purchase of animals, need in descending
order of animal health and disease control precautions, animal hygiene and management,
common diseases of milking animals and vaccination schedule will develop the knowledge of
women dairy farmers. Involvement of OMFED with Women cooperative society will help to
sell the surplus milk at their doorstep. It will bring about all the women dairy farmers in a
common platform irrespective of cast, religion, rich & poor. And at the same time it will
increase the inflow of urban money to the poor villagers of Narla Block by marketing their
dairy products round the year, so that villagers like Hemabati can afford nutritious food for
themselves.