With India having only 8% of the production capacity for cattle feed for breedable animals, there is an urgent need to ensure good quality cattle feed and mineral mixture to improve per animal productivity and meet international standards, said the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Parshottam Rupala.
Though India is the largest milk producer in the world, there is still ample scope to improve per animal productivity, the Minister said. He said concerted efforts should be put up in promoting different variants of compound cattle feed for different categories of animals.
Rupala asked National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to take steps to have more qualified trained manpower, efficient plants and machinery and technical expertise in cattle industry to produce right type of feeds.
The Minister launched an NDDB Cattle Feed Knowledge Portal, an interactive knowledge platform on various aspects of compound cattle feed production. The portal would also have information on least cost formula for feeds, suppliers of feed ingredients, raw material specifications as well as a discussion forum to share information.
According to NDDB, the organised sector could only produce 5% of the cattle feed for breedable animals. While the dairy cooperative network produces about 3.6 million tonnes cattle feed per annum with an installed capacity of about 5 million tonnes in 70 cattle feed plants, the private sector has the capacity to produce an additional 4.5 million tonnes. The production of around of 8 million tonnes per annum is sufficient for only about 8 million of the more than 100 million breedable animals, the NDDB stated.