Central nod for special animal husbandry package to raise 10 crore farmers income

New Delhi: In a shot in arm for the 10 crore farmers in the animal husbandry sector, the Centre on Wednesday cleared a Rs 9800 crore package to boost growth in the area and improve their economic conditions.

The ‘special livestock sector package’, was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The package consists of several activities by revising and realigning various components of schemes for next 5 years starting from 2021-22  to make animal husbandry more remunerative to 10 crore farmers engaged in Animal Husbandry Sector, said a government statement.

The Rs 9800 crore package will leverage on the committed investment of Rs.54,618 crore in this sector by State Governments, State Cooperatives, Financial institutions, External funding agencies and other stakeholder, it added.

With the clearance of the package, all the schemes of the Department will be merged into three broad categories as Development Programmes which includes Rashtriya Gokul Mission, National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD), National Livestock Mission (NLM) and Livestock Census and Integrated Sample Survey (LC & ISS) as sub-schemes.

The Disease Control programme will be renamed as Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) which includes the present Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) scheme and National Animal Disease Control Programme (NADCP).

The Infrastructure Development Fund, the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development fund (AHIDF) and the Dairy Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF) will be merged and the present scheme for support to Dairy Cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organisations engaged in Dairy activities will also be included in the third category.

The Rashtriya Gokul Mission will help in development and conservation of indigenous breeds and would also contribute in improving the economic condition of the rural poor.

The National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD) scheme will target towards installation of about 8900 bulk milk coolers, providing benefit to more than 8 lakh milk producers, and 20 LLPD milk will be additionally procured.

Under NPDD, financial assistance from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will be availed thus strengthening and creating fresh infrastructure in 4500 villages, the statement said.

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