Do Dairy Co-operatives Enhance Milk Production, Productivity and Quality? Evidences from the Indo-Gangetic Plain of India

Dairy development of India has been acclaimed as one of the most successful development programmes inthe world. The co-operatives were conceived as the main vehicle for implementing dairy developmentprogrammes in India and much of the SUCCesS of the 'White Revolution' in the country is attributed to cooperativeframework of the dairy development strategies. Nonetheless, the potential of the dairy cooperativesin the context of emerging globalised markets is often questioned. The emergence of severalintegrated marketing models backed by giant multinationals is posing stiff competition to the co-operativemodels of milk marketing. In this backdrop, this study examines the impact of co-operatives at the farmlevel based on the data collected from 675 dairy farming households in three states of India - Bihar,Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. These states represent geographical and institutional diversity of milkproduction and marketing in the country, This study aims at analysing the impact of dairy co-operatives onthe farmers' performance with the adoption of milk quality and safety practices. The findings indicate thatthe stature of the 'as the multifunctional entity for dairy fanners of rural India is still intact. Across comparison between the member and the non-member farmers of the dairy co-operatives sUllge:ststhat the scale of farming and level of adoption of improved animals have been significantly higher formember fanners. Similarly, the eo-operative member households contributed significantly higher quantityof milk at higher levels of productivity than their non-member counterparts, The eo-operative memberswere found to have better market access for selling milk. Per unit cost of milk production was on the lowerside for the members and they realised higher price of milk than the non-member farmers. Moreimportantly, the members were relatively better adopters of milk safety and hygiene practices' and hadlower additional cost of compliance and that in turn would promote better compliance. Further, the paperidentifies the major factors that enabled the dairy farmers to participate in co-operatives. The results of theProbit analysis suggested that the socio-economic and demographic factors like education, experience,scale of farming, size of holdings, caste affiliation, etc, determine the participation of dairy farmers in cooperatives.The membership in the co-operatives gives a distinct advantage to dairy farmers for enhancedmilk yield, productivity and quality, and thereby increases their competitiveness in the domestic andinternational markets. The potential of dairy co-operatives need to be fully exploited in the country, and toempower them further, new initiatives should be vigorously pursued

A Kumar, S Parappurathu, S Jee, 'Do Dairy Co-operatives Enhance Milk Production, Productivity and Quality? Evidences from the Indo-Gangetic Plain of India', Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 68(3), pp.457-468, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, 2014