Dairy Cooperatives a Sustainable Agriculture System: Logistic and Management Analysis from Haryana, India

Abstract

Indian agriculture is a symbiosis of various production systems. Majority of the farmers have marginal and small land holding or are landless and cropping alone is not a profitable venture. Most families keep a few cattle for food and nutritional security and a source of income. In India, a dairy cooperative is emerging as a novel and a major rural development activity for sustainable development, especially of poor households for regular and timely cash income and allied benefits. Contribution of dairying to GDP of the country is higher than from crop husbandry. The dairy cooperatives collect milk on a daily basis from villages and convert it into various value added products which are sold through various outlets thereby benefiting both the suppliers and the consumers. The objective of the present investigation was to study the organization and management structure of dairy cooperative and ascertain the impact of dairy cooperatives on the members. The study was conducted in Haryana State, India on a sample of 200 members of dairy cooperative, comprising of 100 men and 100 women drawn from 10 villages of two districts. The dairy cooperative works under a three-tier structure i.e. dairy cooperative society (DCS) at the village level, milk unions at the district level and Federation at state level. There were 4650 DCS, 6 Milk Unions and 1 Federation registered as Haryana Dairy Development Cooperative Federation (HDDCF). HDDCF had a procurement of 6.75 lakh litres of milk per day from DCS and this was sold mainly to urban consumers as milk in poly bags, flavoured, and value added products as ghee, curd, paneer, lassi, pinni and peda. Majority of the DCS members has 3-4 cattle, and the daily production, sale and consumption of milk per DCS member was 17 litres, 12 litres and 5 litres respectively. Members were paid on daily basis on fat content of the milk and this was determined in front of them when they delivered milk at the DCS. Majority rated economic empowerment to be moderately high due to dairying enterprise and the economic impact on quality of life was evident on economic, educational and social aspects.