Improving Livestock Breeding

Context: Revised version of Rashtriya Gokul Mission and National Livestock Mission to bring focus on entrepreneurship development and breed improvement in livestock.

Issues in livestock breeding sector

• Largely unorganised sector with limited adaptation of modern practices or state support.
• Gaps in forward and backward integration across value chain: It negatively impacts the quality of livestock that is produced and the return on investment for livestock farmers.
• Low productivity and limited scale: Roughly 80% bovines in the country are low on productivity and are reared by small and marginal farmers.

Policy response: Revised version of Rashtriya Gokul Mission and National Livestock Mission (NLM)

• Policy focuses on entrepreneurship development and breed improvement in cattle, buffalo, poultry, sheep, goat, and piggery
  • By providing incentives to individual entrepreneurs, farmer producer organisations, farmer cooperatives, joint liability groups, self-help groups etc for breed improvement infrastructure.
• Capital incentives and support measures:
  • To breeding farms: Breed multiplication farm component of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission to provide for capital subsidy up to Rs 200 lakh for setting up breeding farm with at least 200 milch cows/buffalo using latest breeding technology.
    • These farms can start generating profits from first year itself and will result in the employment of 1 lakh farmers.
  • To poultry entrepreneurship: This component of NLM will provide for capital subsidy up to Rs 25 lakh for setting up of a parent farm with a capacity to rear 1,000 chicks.
    • These farms can generate profits within 18 months and is expected to provide employment to at least 14 lakh people.
  • For sheep and goat entrepreneurship, there is a provision of capital subsidy of 50% up to 50 lakhs.
    • This model is projected to generate net profit of more than Rs33 lakh for entrepreneur/year.
  • For piggery, NLM will provide 50% capital subsidy of up to Rs 30 lakh. This model is expected to generate a profit of Rs 1.37 crore after 16 months and 1.5 lakh jobs.
• Information dissemination: Through promotion of web applications like e-Gopala that provide real-time information to livestock farmers on availability of disease-free germplasm in relevant centres, veterinary care, etc.

Conclusion: The revised scheme of NLM coupled with the Rashtriya Gokul Mission and the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund has the potential to dramatically enhance the productivity and traceability standards of our livestock.