Milk Production in India
The Journey of India’s Dairy Sector
India: From a milk-deficit nation to a milk-products exporter
The evolution of the dairy sector in India and the stellar role played by dairy cooperatives
since the launch of Operation Flood form an integral part of the country’s remarkable growth
story after Independence. Today, India is the largest producer of milk in the world,
contributing 23% of global milk production.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the situation was radically different. India was a milk-deficit
nation dependent on imports, and the annual production growth was negative for several
years. The annual compound growth rate in milk production during the first decade after
independence was 1.64%, which declined to 1.15% during the 1960s. In 1950-51, per capita
consumption of milk in the country was only 124 grams per day. By 1970, this figure had
dropped to 107 grams per day, one of the lowest in the world and well below the minimum
recommended nutritional standards. India’s dairy industry was struggling to survive. The
country produced less than 21 million tonnes of milk per annum despite having the largest
cattle population in the world.
Following the visit of late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to the Anand district of
Gujarat in 1964, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was created in 1965 with a
mandate to support the creation of the ‘Anand Pattern’ of dairy cooperatives across the
country through the Operation Flood (OF) programme which was to be implemented in
phases.
The ‘Anand Pattern’ was essentially a cooperative structure comprising village-level Dairy
Cooperative Societies (DCSs), which promote district-level unions, which in turn promote
state-level marketing federation. Starting in 1970, NDDB replicated the Anand Pattern
cooperatives through the Operation Flood programme all over India.
Dr. Verghese Kurien, widely renowned as the “Father of White Revolution” in India,
was the first chairman of NDDB. Along with his team, Dr. Kurien commenced work on the
launch of the project, which envisaged the organisation of Anand-pattern cooperatives in
milk sheds across the country from where liquid milk produced and procured by milk
cooperatives would be transported to cities.
Operation Flood was implemented in the following phases:
1. Phase I (1970–1980) was financed by the sale of skimmed milk powder and butter oil
donated by the European Union (then the European Economic Community) through the
World Food Programme.
2. Phase II (1981–1985) increased the number of milk sheds from 18 to 136; urban markets
expanded the outlets for milk to 290. By the end of 1985, a self-sustaining system of 43,000
village cooperatives with 42,50,000 milk producers had been covered.
3. Phase III (1985–1996) enabled dairy cooperatives to expand and strengthen the
infrastructure required to procure and market increasing volumes of milk. This phase added
30000 new dairy cooperatives, which led to a total of 73,000.
Operation Flood helped quality milk reach consumers across 700 towns and cities through a
National Milk Grid. The programme also helped remove the need for middlemen, thereby
reducing seasonal price variations. The cooperative structure made the whole exercise of
production and distribution of milk and milk products economically viable for farmers to
undertake on their own. It also ended India's dependence on imported milk solids. Not only
was the nation equipped to meet its local dairy needs, but it also started exporting milk
powder to many foreign countries. Genetic improvement of milking animals also increased
due to cross-breeding. As the dairy industry modernised and expanded, around 10 million
farmers started earning their income from dairy farming.
Milk production in 1950-51 stood at merely 17 Million Tonnes (MT). In 1968-69, prior to the
launch of Operation Flood, milk production was only 21.2 MT which increased to 30.4 MT
by 1979-80 and 51.4 MT by 1989-90. Now it has increased to 210 million tonnes in 2020-
21. Today, milk production is growing at the rate of two per cent in the whole world,
whereas in India, its growth rate is more than six per cent. The per capita availability of
milk in India is much higher than the world average. In three decades (the 1980s, 1990s and
2000s), the daily milk consumption in the country rose from a low of 107 grams per person
in 1970 to 427 grams per person in 2020-21 as against the world average of 322 grams per
day during 2021.
After Operation Flood, the Indian dairy and animal husbandry sector emerged as a primary
source of income for a huge number of rural households – most of them either landless, small
or marginal farmers. Today, India holds the place of pride of having been the largest milk-
producing country in the world for nearly two-and-a-half decades.
The dairy sector assumes a great deal of significance for India on various accounts. As an
industry, it employs more than 80 million rural households, with the majority being small and
marginal farmers as well as the landless. The cooperative societies have not only made the
farmers self-sufficient but have also broken the shackles of gender, caste, religion, and
community. Women producers form the major workforce of the dairy sector in the
country. The sector is an important job provider, especially for women, and plays a leading
role in women’s empowerment.
Every year, since 2001, June 1 is observed as World Milk Day by the Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations to acknowledge the importance of milk as a global
food and to celebrate the dairy sector. In India, the birthday of Dr. Verghese Kurien,
on November 26, is observed as National Milk Day.
With a series of measures being taken by the Government as well as the growing role of the
private sector in dairy development, India is expected to sustain its growth in milk production
and milk processing in the coming decades. Further, to encourage farmers to take up
productivity enhancement of indigenous breeds of milch animals in a scientific manner and to
motivate Cooperative and Milk producer Companies, the Government of India is conferring
the prestigious National Gopal Ratna Awards on the occasion of National Milk Day. To
know about the winners of the National Gopal Ratna Awards – 2022.
The dairy sector has been a major contributor to the growth of the rural economy in India.
The government has facilitated the dairy farming infrastructure through its initiatives such as
the development of the National Dairy Plan, a sustainable development-focused framework
for the sector, along with general empowerment schemes such as the Jan Dhan Yojana and
the Start-up India initiative. In the past eight years, the animal husbandry and dairying
sector have received a great deal of impetus under Prime Minister Modi’s vision of
‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, and the journey of this sector is indeed a remarkable reflection of
self-reliance.
Dairy farming is considered as one the core functions of
agriculture for long-term production of milk. Large scale dairy
farms are utilizing modern and innovative technology for
automating the milking system and maintaining the health
parameters of the cattle. Today, dairy farmers focus more on
precision farming by monitoring and developing a database for
information provisioning and capturing competitive market data.
To ensure sustainability and remain competitive in the market,
dairy farmers need to monitor variety of data sources like cattle
feeding, calving, nutrition, insemination, and the process of milk
production. However, they also face several challenges such as:
1. Breeding infrastructure and genetics: The success of dairy
farming is mostly attributed to the rising number of animals,
and not productivity. When the resources are limited, it is
imperative to increase the productivity per animal. There is
a high demand for good animal genetics, breeding
infrastructure and advance breeding methods such as
artificial insemination and embryo transfer.
2. Animal feed and fodder: There is an acute and ever-growing
shortage of green fodder and good quality feed. The growing
trend of high breed animals is creating a huge demand for
good quality feed and fodder to cater the dietary
requirement of milking animals. Also, in order to avoid many
health and nutrition related complications, prophylactic
approach is driving the use of feed pre-mixes.
3. Animal health: Good healthcare and animal disease
diagnostic solutions are required to address the gap. As high
yielding animals demand extra care, the focus on animal
health is driving this segment.
4. Farm mechanization: There is growing shortage and high
cost of labor. Hence, farmers are adopting mechanization
techniques to meet the global milk production.
5. Cold chain infrastructure: There is a lack of adequate
infrastructure of chilling plants and bulk coolers to prevent
contamination and spoilage at the grassroots level. This
segment is bound to see growth opportunities with the
government and private sector investing heavily to secure
sufficient procurements.
6. Power availability: Many chilling plants suffer due to
shortage of electricity and do not run optimally, leading to
poor quality and shelf life of milk. The opportunity within this
segment could be solar powered milk chillers.
7. Quality testing infrastructure and trained work
force: Adequate quality testing infrastructure is not available
at milk collection centers. The problem is compounded by
the lack of trained manpower to undertake quality testing.
At the consumer end, the demand for safe food is emerging
fast and thus creates high opportunity.
8. Processing equipment and food ingredients: Growing
consumer awareness and shifting lifestyle are forcing
processors to move towards product innovation and creating
a demand for high-quality equipment and various food
ingredients.
9. Waste handling: The environmental challenges of dairy
farms are related to disposal of dung and urinal wastewater.
Poor handling and disposal of dung and wastewater cause
water pollution and odor problems.
10. Byproduct handling: A number of byproducts such as whey,
buttermilk, skim milk, and ghee residue (GR) and derived
byproducts like caseins, caseinates, lactose, whey proteins
(WP), etc. are produced by the dairy industry. Attempts have
been made globally to utilize these byproducts because of
their high nutritive value. Dairy plants are still confronted
with the problem of byproduct utilization because of lack of
adequate technology and high cost of new technologies.
Impact of IoT on smart farming
Today, Internet of Things (IoT) is making a significant impact on
milk production. Global milk production to meet the demands of
the growing population needs to be enhanced with technology.
With this technology, farmers can enhance and improve several
dairy related activities such as ascertaining the right time to milk
cows, increasing the shelf life of the milk and so on.
In dairy farming, the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a crucial in the
monitoring of resources by connecting multiple and
heterogeneous objects in mixed dairy farms (which produce milk
from cattle and cultivate feed grain for livestock), such as
buildings, machinery and vehicles or even living organisms like
cattle. The IoT Sensor and Edge Computing (EC) enable resource
monitoring and traceability in the value chain, allowing producers
to optimize processes, provide the origin of the produce and
guarantee its quality to consumers.
IoT technology leverages multiple sensors for collecting various
data points and data transmission with low power and bandwidth
for communication. Adaption of smart sensors and techniques
(data sensing methods like pressure sensing, volumetric sensing,
sensing schedules etc.) help to improve resource efficiency, are
environment-friendly, enable transparency and data security.
These techniques maintain a real-time view of the milk levels,
monitor the health of the cattle, warehouse management, and
safe transportation access.
IoT platforms and integrated AI engines, gateways, LPWA
networks and smart sensors push the industry into a real
revolution. The latest technologies are being introduced to
automate many of the processes. IoT and data-driven techniques
are creating greater opportunities for smart dairy farming. IoT can
support farmers with wearable sensor devices to keep them
aware of the status of every animal. The sensor-based system can
effectively and correctly detect the illness of the cattle before it
affects the milk production. IoT serves as an important foundation
for cattle breeding by tracking real-time cattle information such
as activity, temperature, and pulse. This crucial information can
then be used to conduct a thorough analysis to determine cattle
oestrus. Increase in milk yield, reduced labor and medicine
treatment costs, and increase in the revenue of dairy farms are
the most exciting benefits of this technology. This technology has
also received close attention from dairy product enterprises and
animal breeding initiatives.
IoT and AI based technological methods can be used to minimize
the negative factors and enhance those factors that positively
affect the production. For instance, an artificial intelligence (AI)
model developed based on IoT sensors in milking systems can
provide data to help farmers determine when the cattle should be
milked or to help the farmer change the feeding pattern. These
data can be further enhanced to maintain quality of milk and help
to understand production. The state of the art framework by
combining IoT sensor, IoT platform and AI solutions should be
focused on different aspects of smart dairy farming to assist the
farmers increase the milk yield by using different techniques and
innovation.
Figure 1: Outlines how IoT can be used for various touch points
The technological adoption of IoT and AI based approach helps in
creating innovative methodologies for production (milk yield) and
the process of dairy farming. Process innovation can be different
for different sets of activities that are performed at several levels
in a smart dairy farm. In a dairy farm, the milking process is
viewed as a singular process; however, there are several
activities that are performed in the farm such as feeding, cow
monitoring, and preserving milk. The intervention of IoT can be in
different processes and procedures like the feed system to sense
the hunger needs of the cows and automatically feed them. It can
also proactively monitor automatic heat detection that will assist
in reproduction. Assessing health and monitoring cows for disease
detection and prevention will help the farmer to locate any animal
that needs medical attention.
Smart dairy farming includes real time sensors that collect data
from cows with the help of wearable smart collars, machine
learning data analysis, and cloud-based data centers that manage
data and support the farmer in order to manage quality of dairy
products as depicted in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Day to day life of cattle and IoT sensor
requirement
Benefits envisaged
IoT and AI technology adoption can play a significant role in the
dairy industry to simplify the operations for milk producers and
meet the increasing demand for quality dairy products. The
technological advancement in IoT can help minimize
environmental issues, decrease the use of resources, and
enhance animal health by using advanced sensing and data
analyzing technologies.
IoT based technology can be used in farm management to reduce
costs and make operations efficient. Here are some key
outcomes:
Health monitoring: Monitoring and tracking of cattle health data
like heart rate and other vital signs of a cow can help farmers in
early diagnosis of health issues and provide correct medication.
Monitoring of anomalies in milk production: It is essential to
understand cattle behavior and milk production by monitoring
continuously and comparing the regular patterns. Each animal
can be tagged with a unique identification number to help track
the animal’s production and understand their health patterns.
Tracking of automatic water and food supply:
Water is an important nutrient for all animals, and it is
important that cows should have sufficient quality water.
Milk contains almost 87% water. The water requirements are
closely related to milk production, the moisture content of
the feed, and environmental factors such as air temperature
and humidity.
Food is necessary for nutrition because it determines the
amount of nutrients available to the animal for health and
production. It is important to track the food feeding & and
nutrition to maintain good health of the cattle. The
underfeeding of nutrients limits production and affects
animal health. Overfeeding of nutrients increases feed costs,
can lead to excessive nutritional load on the environment,
and can be too toxic or dangerous to health.
Technology driven future for the dairy industry
New-age smart techniques using IoT devices will help farmers
with increased milk production, advanced monitoring of cattle
health & anomaly detection, thereby streamlining the business
and processes. Although smart dairy farming using IoT gives
various features to a common farmer, it may be a costly affair at
the beginning; yet offers the promise of cost recovery with longer
usage. IoT helps in efficient monitoring of the feeding and
drinking method which can lead to better nutrition of cows, and
more milk production. The system with overall architecture,
better adaptation of technology, and versatile design can make
IoT-based farming more efficient.
Introduction
Due to the population growth and the industrial development, world energy
consumption considerably increases in the last decades. The use of fossil fuels is still
the main energy sources. However, fossil fuels are not renewable energies, further,
they are highly polluting, and their production tends to decrease during the next few
decades [1] . Yet, the increased energy consumption based on fossil fuels affects our
environment through the greater amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, the
environmental pollution of water, air and soil, and the climate changes, which
dramatically influence the quality of life and the health of people. Therefore, it is
important to develop new sustainable energy supply systems that cover the
increasing energy demand from renewable sources. Reducing greenhouse gas
emissions through renewable energy production is of rising importance [2] .
Biogas, produced by anaerobic digestion of wastewater, organic waste, agricultural
waste, industrial waste, and animal by-products is a potential source of renewable
energy [3] .
Anaerobic digestion is a series of biological process in which microorganism breaks
down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. It is a step by step process
where the organic carbon is mainly converted to carbon dioxide and methane. Figure
1 shows the process of producing biogas divided into hydrolysis, acidogenesis,
acetogenesis and methanogenesis [4] .
Biogas is mainly methane and carbon dioxide and small amounts of hydrogen
sulfide. The gases methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide can be combusted or
oxidized with oxygen. This energy release allows biogas to be used as a fuel [5] . It
can also be used in a gas engine to convert the energy in the gas into electricity and
heat and even for internal combustion engines. Biogas can be compressed, the same
way natural gas is compressed. When it becomes bio-methane, biogas can be
upgraded to natural gas standards [6] .
The rate of biogas production depends greatly on the temperature for digesters.
Anaerobic digestion process generally occurs at three temperature ranges. These
ranges are defined as psychrophilic (15˚C - 20˚C), mesophilic (30˚C - 40˚C) and
thermophilic (50˚C - 60˚C).
During biological decomposition and conversion processes, the rate of chemical
Figure 1. Flow chart of anaerobic digestion process.
reaction increases with the increase in the surrounding temperature. However, there
should not be rapid temperature fluctuations during the digestion process, due to
that methanogenic bacteria are sensitive to temperature conditions. A sudden
change in temperature will hamper the methanogenic bacteria resulting in
decreased biogas production. The optimum temperature for anaerobic digestion and
methanogenic bacteria is found to be between 30˚C to 40˚C [7] . The relative growth
rate of methanogens under different temperature conditions is presented in Figure 2.
2. Aim of the Study
The main objective of this research is investigation of biogas production by
decomposition cow dung is needed for the students’ level. It is also trusted worth
saying that the cow dung is generally available in the Arab counties.
3. Components of the Experiment
1) Two plastic tanks 18 L. The first tanks for digester and another tank for fill water.
2) Graduated cylinder 2000 mL for measure volume biogas produce.
3) Connections.
4) Rubber tube.
4. Experimental Set-Up
This research was made to a simple demonstration of biogas production by
decomposition of cow dung. The digester made of plastic tank of 18 liters capacity
was used for set-up. The experimental the set-up is shown in The full setup for this
experimental was the connection of the digester to the water displacement setup for
the gas collection. The water displacement method of gas collection is a method in
which gas is allowed to replace water at equal volume of water displaced and this
was used to determine the volume of gas produced daily. The mode of feeding used
was a batch feeding (discontinued feeding). This
Relation between temperature and growth rate of methanogens.The experimental
setup.
simply means loading the digester at once and maintaining a closed environment
throughout the retention period. The procedures taken during feeding of the digester
are as follow:
1) 5 kg of the cow dung was weighed and 5 liters of water was mixed thoroughly
with of the waste in the ratio of 1:1.
2) The mixture of the waste was poured into digester.
The digesters were operated at temperature in the mesophilic range with a hydraulic
retention time of 30 days.
5. Measurement Methods
Biogas production from the digesters was measured daily by graduated cylinder.
Measure pH was analytical and food laboratory at Omar Al-Mukhtar University by
using pH meter.
6. Results and Discussion
This experiment was carried out using cow dung. The details of the experiment are
illustrated in shows the volume biogas produced from cow dung within the retention
period 30 days. For biogas produced in cow dung, biogas was not produced for the
first 8 days since it takes more time for cow dung to decompose afterward which gas
is being produced. This is forecast because non growth of methanogenic bacteria.
This can also be traced to the fact that most cows feed on fibrous materials and
microorganisms require a longer time to degrade fibrous materials. Production of gas
from cow dung started on day 9 of the retention period by producing average biogas
of 30 ml, thereafter increases to 100 ml on day 10 and reduces to 50 ml on day 12.
At day 13, the biogas produced was 160 ml in which decreases back to 45 ml on the
next day and increases thereafter until it reached the peak on day 22 with 340 ml
biogas production after which it begins to reduce till the completion of the retention
period
illustrates the pH of cow dung within the 30 days retention period.
Volume of biogas against number of days.
pH of Slurry against number of days.
Table 1. The details of the experiment.
The pH for cow dung fluctuate from the first day to the tenth day between 5 and 7.4,
after which begins to decrease gradually for the remaining days of the retention
period. As it was observed in the first few days, the pH of cow dung decreases due to
high volatile fatty acid. The gradual reduction explains the gradually change of stage
of the production of biogas, from hydrolysis to acidogenesis in which the slurry
become acidic and form substrate after which it produces biogas.
7. Conclusion
This research shows that biogas can be produced from cow dung through anaerobic
digestion. This dung is continuously offered in our location and can be used as an
alternative energy resource. The research exposed further that cow dung as animal
waste has large possibilities for production of biogas. The application should be
encouraged due to high volume of biogas produces.
8. Recommendations
In the future, an experiment would be expanded for including all types of animal
wast
