Kisan Our Owners’: Amul Aims To Double Farmers Income In Next 4 Years
By creating a dairy herd that is genetically superior, tested, and able to produce twice as much milk at the same cost, Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) intends to double the income of farmers in the next four years, news agency ANI reported.
According to Amit Vyas, managing director of Amul Dairy, they are enhancing the breeds of dairy cows and buffaloes by using technologies like embryo transplant, sorted sex semen, and digital bands.
Highlighting that real owners of Amul are farmers, Vyas stated: “In my journey of 77 years, Amul has always given priority to farmers and always ensured they live a good life and how they can get good money for milk production. The vision of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was to create market linkages. There is no owner in Amul, farmers are the actual owners of Amul.”
“We are focusing on the genetics of our dairy herd and the high breed has proven bulls which will be used for fertilization of embryo, to ensure high breed future generations also,” he was quoted by ANI in its report.
He said, “In the future, cattle will have great genetic quality, which will allow them produce more milk and immediately increase the standard of living for farmers.”
“The average cow produces 7-8 litres of milk daily and it has been improved from four litres. Our basic idea is to bring down the production cost of milk for farmers. Earlier, farmers used to concentrate on increasing numbers of cows to produce more milk but we have asked them not to do so and produce the milk of equivalent to 10 cows from five cows by adopting these high breeds cows and new technologies,” Amit Vyas said.
He continued by saying that they have undertaken specific activities, such as sorting sex semen and other technology, to achieve this. To monitor the health of the animals and analyse their trends, they have digitalized the whole Amul and even given them digital bracelets.
It was discovered earlier that bovines deliver more males than females. Additionally, thanks to technology, more female calves are giving birth, which helps farmers make more money.
“We are working on homoeopathy medicines and ayurvedic medicines for cows because it is very cost-effective compared to the allopathic treatment of bovines,” he said.
In response to a question on how to boost farmers’ income, Vyas stated: “Farmers’ income can only be boosted by cutbacks in expenditures or by offering them technology at a low cost to double their revenue and improve their living.”
In describing the significance of the dairy industry to Gujarat’s GDP, Vyas noted that 20–25 percent of Gujarat’s GDP comes from the agricultural sector.
“We have the most economical supply chain in Amul in the world so that we can give more money to farmers. In Amul of every rupee earned, we return around 85 paise to farmers however internationally the rate of return is 33 per cent in the case of farmers,” Amit Vyas said.