Viability of Dairy Farming in Assam: A Case Study of Morigaon District
Author : Dr. Abu Jafor
Abstract :
To resolve the overall food, health and education problems occurring in the world today, international development goals were set that are directly or indirectly associated with livestock sector, even more to dairy farming (DFID, 2005). India is endowed with the largest livestock population in the world. Thus, there is a tremendous potential for increasing the milk production through profitable dairy farming. The dairy farming is an important enterprise that provides employment, income and nutritive food for millions of rural families and also supplies cow dung as organic manure to enrich the soil fertility and thus help in increasing crop production. Assam, with vast natural endowment, has the enormous potentiality for the development of dairy sector. A recent study conducted by International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) revealed that dairy farming is a viable option in Assam for raising incomes and improving livelihood opportunities particularly for the rural poor.
With this backdrop, we attempt to explore the feasibility/viability of dairy farming in the proposed study area by employing gross margin analysis. This study has received considerable attention as it gives pertinent information for making sound management decision in resource allocation and also helped in improving quality of life of the rural public apart from employment generation amongst the rural poor.
Keywords :
Dairy farming, gross margin, viability, Assam
