Cows to the rescue

Press, 16 November 1981, Page 20

Cows to the rescue

From “The Economist,” London.

Mini-miracles are taking 'place in parts of India which were once considered impervious to growth. The poor in these places are very very poor and so is the land: skills, capital and water are all too scarce for conventional farming. And the cattle which can survive on the local scrub are too emaciated to earn their keep. But now this picture is being transformed by the development of a new breed of cow and a new type of fodder, both well suited to arid conditions. The result is the beginnings of a thriving dairy industry which can turn idle land and idle labour profitably productive. The project is the brainchild of a non-profit voluntary agency, Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (8.A.1.F.) which is paid, partly by foreign donors,' partly by a Bombay foundation but mostly by the service contracts it gets from central and local government. These services include door-to-door deliveries of semen, seeds for the new fodder and how-to-do-it advice on building cheap houses, installing pumps and running simple biogas sys-

terns. The charges are low enough for small farmers to afford but those who are too poor to pay are subsidised by the Government. Scientists at the main 8.A.1.F. campus near Pune made their breakthrough by inseminating nondescript local cows with imported semen of the highest quality. (Imported cows would, be too expensive and could not survive harsh local conditions.) They developed a breed that is two thirds exotic, ’. one third local and combines high milk yields with high adaptability. .

Semen for further inseminations is packed in cartridges, floating in cans of liquid nitrogen, and delivered to farmers by trained veterinarians mounted on motorcycles. The success rate of inseminations is high, the cost very low. From the first calving by artificial insemination, it takes three to. four years to .establish a self-perpetuating-breed. The fodder‘ for these new cows is completely exotic in origin: it comes from a tree called leucaena leucocaphala which is native to El Salvador and reached India by way of

Hawaii. This tree, renamed kubabul, yields large harvests of protein-rich fodder and quickly regenerates itself with little water and.less care. It even enriches the soil by generously “fixing” nitrogen and humus. . The cow-tree cycle produces an annual income 20 times the cost of. establishing it before the milking life of the first crossbred cow comes to an end after 8-10 years. Pilot projects, have proved that by ’ using these methods, a poor family can raise enough income from less than a hectare of land to fit itself above India’s poverty line. The landless can join the programme too: the foundation gives them half-hectare plots of public land on long leases. So. far only about 8000 villages in 20-yillage units, are participating in the dairy scheme, most of them in the barren Deccan plateau and equally barren parts of north central India. But the potential for expansion is enormous. At least 60M hectares of land are lying idle in India today. At the rate of one hectare per family, this would be enough to rescue all 300 M people whom India considers poor.’