A price rise nobody is talking about

Unprecedented fodder price rise is forcing farmers to quit dairy and abandon cattle

- BHAGIRATH WITH ARVIND SHUKLA AND SANDEEP MEEL

FIFTEEN YEARS ago Mangat Ram decided to start living the life he had always dreamed of. He quit his job in an automobile factory and bought two buffaloes to start a dairy. "I foresaw better future in dairy since milk demand was increasing," he says. A resident of Haryana's Lokra village in Gurugram district, Mangat Ram also pursued a course to become a certified veterinarian. His business sense proved impeccable by 2021, when he owned 39 cows, calves and bulls and was earning ₹2.43 lakh a month from milk sale. But something happened towards the end of year that jolted him out of his dream-an unprecedented rise in fodder price. From ₹4,250 per tonne in November 2021, fodder prices rose to ₹15,000 in May 2022. The over threefold increase in the cost of the most critical input (food for animals accounts for up to 60 per cent of the input cost) in just six months turned his finances upside down. Normally, Mangat Ram would earn up to ₹65,000 a year from one cow. "I will suffer a loss of ₹54,000 a year from each cow now. The milk still sells at the same rate while the input cost has trebled," he says. "Between December 2021 and March 2022, I incurred a loss of ₹2.5-3 lakh," he adds.

In May, when Down To Earth (DTE) visited Mangat Ram, he had already sold or donated 28 cows at a throwaway price of ₹5,000 per head (these could have been sold for ₹80,000 per head) and retained seven cows, two calves and two bulls. "I do not see fodder price falling soon or getting to the level at which maintaining a cow remains profitable," he says.

Like Mangat Ram, most residents of Lokra have sold their cows. The population of milch animals in the village has dwindled from 450 to 150 in the past one year, say residents. "Milk production has come down to a fourth of what it was six months ago," says Praveen Yadav of the village, who runs a dairy.