The good news is …

Allocating current feed resources to fewer animals would substantially decrease numbers of animals, feed requirements and greenhouse gases while maintaining overall milk volumes. Also, smaller increases in per animal milk yield are highly effective.

And the not so good news is …

Support to shift from low to higher producing animals is still lacking, and where exists, only slowly successful. Also, opportunities for increasing milk yield to levels substantially higher than 12 liters will be constrained by feed resources, specifically low concentrate availability

Scenarios about dairy productivity, feed resource requirements and green house gas emissions in India

Blümmel M., Anandan S. and Prasad C. S.

1International Livestock Research Institute, c/o ICRISAT, Patancheru 502324, AP, India 2National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology, Bangalore 560030, India

3Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Animal Science Division New Delhi-110 114, India

Challenge: Dairy contribute significantly to livelihoods in India, but their demand for natural resources and their emission of greenhouse gases attracts mounting criticism.

Assumptions: To remain viable, dairy must grow with reduced resource usage and greenhouse gas emissions, which can only succeed if more milk is produced from fewer animals

Livestock population and mean milk yield in 2005-06

Milch animals Total animals Milk yield

x 103 kg/d

Cross Bred 8 216 28 391 6.44

Local 28 370 155 805 1.97

Buffalo 33 137 101 253 4.40

Status: India has high numbers of livestock. Few are dairy animals with an across herd (cross bred, local and buffalo) average milk yield of only 3.61 liters per day. At this milk yield 1248 x 109 MJ ME are required for maintaining the animals and 574 x 109 MJ ME for milk production.

Changing scenarios: If average daily milk yields across herd would increase to 15 liter, ME required for maintenance would fall to 300 x 109 MJ. Total feed ME requirement would more than half from 1822 x 109 to 874 x 109 MJ. Methane emission would drastically decrease. Optimal utilization of current feed resources could support daily milk yields of about 8 liters. Improving basal diets (crop residues) could increase this to about 12 liters. Across herd mean = 3.61 kg/d

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