Parliamentary panel suggests giving subsidies to farmers to keep non-milching livestock

The Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Agriculture, headed by former Punjab Chief Minister and Congress MP Charanjit Singh Channi, has recommended subsidies for farmers to keep non-milching animals to manage the problem of stray cattle. The panel asked the Centre to increase the allocation for insuring livestock.

Appreciating the efforts of the Union Animal Husbandry Department to control the birth of male bovine offspring using sex-sorted semen techniques — whereby only female calves are born with 90% accuracy rate — the panel said there is also need to prevent further growth of stray cattle from the already existing livestock population of 193.46 million cattle and 109.85 million buffaloes.

“Therefore, the Committee recommend that some incentive/subsidy may be provided to farmers and farm labourers for taking care of cattle and buffaloes which are past their economic utility in addition to increasing fund allocation for promotion of Gaushalas [cattle shelters] across country with farmers having a choice to either avail services of Gaushala or avail government incentive/subsidy for taking care of their non-productive bovine animals,” the report said.

The panel also noted that the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying is covering only 1% of the livestock population under the Centrally sponsored National Livestock Mission for livestock insurance due to insufficient budget provision.

“Looking towards the risk of more than 10 crore engaged in animal husbandry activities the committee recommends that Government should immediately initiate massive livestock insurance scheme to bring 53.5 crore livestock population under the ambit of this scheme. The committee recommends that higher allocation may be made available by the Government for implementation of livestock insurance scheme,” the report said.

It also asked the Centre to work for self-sufficiency in cattle feed and fodder availability. “With increased availability of green fodder, cost incurred by farmers on milk production will be decreased and dependence of farmers on cattle feed will also be reduced. This will increase profit margins of dairy farmers,” the panel said.