KOCHI: Little Jayasree woke up to a nagging cry from the backyard of her house where she found her anxious family crowding around the cow in their pen that was due to give birth. The girl was a bit startled at first but her mother assured her all would be fine. “There will soon be a Nandini for you to play with,” she told her. From then on, Nandini was her playmate. She watched her being bathed and fed and even braved herself to caress and cuddle her.
This childhood nostalgia led her to keep a small enclosure in the backyard of her house where she reared two cows. This, she did alongside her job as a teacher.
“I get enough milk for my family. However, after watching me deal with the cows, many prompted me to go for it as a full-time profession. But that would mean a whole lot of paperwork and then the tussle to get licences, feed, insurance... The list is endless. I am now happy with my small farm,” she says, probably after observing the ventures that had to be wound up or curtailed due to the state of affairs.
One such venture that was big 10 years ago was the farm run by a former KSRTC employee Vikraman Nair in Angamaly. He had begun it as a supplementary income source, with pension and other perks coming in fits and starts.
“The venture was doing fine till Covid. We had to wind it up after that because of our inability to keep it going. Government support comes but in trickles. That is not enough to keep the farms running with the high cost of feed (a 50kg KS Supreme cattle feed costs Rs1,500). With insurance norms not being farmer-friendly, and milk prices not rising at par with the expenses when you employ manpower, we had to stop the dream run of our farm. So we now only have two cows just to suffice us and our small supply of curd,” says Anisha Soman, Vikraman Nair’s daughter-in-law.
“There are many such small farms that have wound up,” she says. However, there are many which have opened up too but that are either run by people who have backup resources or are a team running such a venture.
Green to White farm at Vellayani is such a joint venture, formed by a team of 11 people. Most of the members of the team are employed in other sectors and the farm is their way to ‘destress’ and fulfil their passion for animals. “We were planning to support our friend who had left his job with IndusInd Bank and was into dairy farming. His venture at Sreekaryam had run into trouble and we, in the process of helping him out, procured a farm run by a woman in Vellayani who was facing issues from local politicians. We registered it as a farmer-producer company six months ago. Now, we have 38 cows on the farm,” says Prakas G R, a partner of the farm.
A farmer-producer company is one of the safest ways to take such ventures forward, say dairy farmers. They point to a lack of support from the government as a reason for more individuals shutting shop. An example is a farmer at Vellayani who had a dairy unit with 10 cows. He is winding it up now because his neighbour complains of a ‘foul’ smell and other polluting factors. With no help from anywhere to tide over the crisis, the farmer has now decided to call it quits.
“The pollution certificate is a must for licence renewal. But for that, they sometimes make tall demands, like having three to four acres with no residence in vicitnity for the farm to function. Such spots are rare in the city,” says Prakash.
Another reason is the stifling scut work that goes behind getting the paperwork done, procuring subsidies or even the ‘unfriendly’ insurance norms. “We have to run behind all these for months. Then the subsidies are hard to come, and they are given as loans to buy cows. But we have to arrange for the infrastructure on our own (the pen, the water supply and drainage system, the waste disposal, et al) which would take a solid Rs 4 to Rs 5 lakh. As regards insurance, cattle have to be insured with a premium of Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000, and it can be claimed only if the cattle dies. Hence, we decided not to go for it and handle things on our own with the money we make from dairy sales,” says Sheeba S who runs a unit with about 15 cows.
She now gets up at 3.30am every day to wash the pen and prepare the animals for milking. “We cannot employ a person. If we do that, the cost would be around Rs 20,000-Rs 50,000. So I do whatever can be done with my husband and my daughter, working from 3.30am to 7pm with breaks for food and shower. The income from this has to be managed well. I have door-to-door supply as well as supply to milk cooperative societies,” she added.
The supply to milk cooperatives alone won’t suffice the farmers, most of them say. “We may get feed in return for the Rs 43 they provide us but that feed will not give us good yield. So we get good feed from Tamil Nadu, and this again takes investment. On an average day, supplying outdoors will fetch us around Rs 60 and supply to cooperative societies will fetch us Rs 43 to Rs 48,” says Jayasree.
The Animal Husbandry Department (AHD), however, claims to have a host of programmes that will help farmers plan their activities better. The training sessions that the Livestock Management Training Centre (LMTC) has devised for dairy farmers across the state help prepare them to understand the process of cattle care better and ensure better yield for money, says an LMTC official.
“A separate agency is being put together as per a Union government scheme called ‘A Help’ where Kudumbasree members would be trained to take up the role as a link between the department and the dairy units,” she says.
Also, now marginal farmers are being supported and are being encouraged to expand their unit to a minimum of 10 cows, says Dr Gopakumar T, Public Relations Officer of AHD.
“This would help them with better output and hence better yield and profit. The census for 2019 says we had a 13 lakh cattle population in the state. The 2024 census will have more, with each unit going through an expansion.”
However, the AHD officials were not clear about how the insurance facilities would be drafted to meet the requirements of farmers who have over 10 cows. Insurance per panchayat allotment is just for 40 to 50 cows. How would the insurance requirement be met is a question to ponder over.
“We farmers are very positive and maybe this in turn will prove beneficial for the state. But in that case, it will be our effort more than the government’s,” says Lakshman C Nair, who runs the Dairy King farm at Puliyarakkonam in Thiruvananthapuram. The techie-turned-farmer caters to premium customers and shops in the city and enjoys every bit of his farm life and the rural milieu.
“I keep my cattle happy, play them music, care for them so that they give me the best yield,” he says with a playful wink.