NEW DELHI: India wants record milk production from its cows and buffaloes to double the income of farmers by 2022 but are our cattle eating well enough to deliver that productivity? Clearly, they are not. The government of 2017-18 could now spend Rs 10,000 Cr to provide cattle with nutritious fodder after the NITI Aayog flagged the unavailability of fodder as a big challenge.The Centre’s big plan, besides increasing the cultivatable area in India for green fodder , could also solve the air pollution problem in Delhi-NCR. A key part of the plan is to collect about 150 million tonnes of crop residues and stubble, covering about 10 million hectares of land, by 2019-20, which can be used as “dry fodder” for cattle and is presently burnt in Punjab and Haryana causing air pollution in these states and Delhi NCR. Punjab and Haryana are both fodder-surplus states and hence farmers burn the stubble. But there are states which struggle for dry fodder – so much so that dry fodder has become costlier than milk. A Group of Secretaries has flagged 35% shortage of dry fodder in the country. Air quality has been of hazardous levels in Delhi NCR for nearly two months now with states struggling to find a solution. So Centre’s plan hence could be a panacea for two issues – more milk production and cleaner air.An incentive of Rs 1000 per hectare is proposed to be extended to farmers who have left crops residue for permitting its collection, as per a draft action plan of the Centre which has been reviewed by ET. “Collection and managing of stubble/straw will also mitigate problems of fog/smog up to some extent,” the plan mentions. The cereal crop residues contribute nearly 70% of overall feed resources used for animal feeding, the plan says. The stubble so collected will be then stored in fodder depots set up for the purpose and transported to fodder deficit regions for bovine feeding round the year. For collecting crop residue as dry fodder, the Centre plans to encourage marginal & small farmers, SC/ST, women and landless Dairy farmers to do the same with the active facilitation of government agencies. “For this purpose, an amount of Rs 1000 per ton incentive to be provided for straw collection limited to 1000 ha for one group of the straw collector may be dovetailed from MNREGA funds,” the Centre’s plan says. The government will also distribute hand driven chaff cutters and power/diesel or solar driven chaff cutters to enable cutting and the storage of stubble.Milk production in India rose from 155 million tonnes in 2015-16 to 164 million tonnes in 2017-17, a rise of 6%. The rise was of a similar level in 2015-16 from 2014-15. But the Centre has an ambitious target of achieving 300 million tonne milk productivity by year 2024 – a key matrix in doubling farmer income by 2022. This would remain a far cry in the present scenario as a major contributor to achieving increased milk productivity is feed and fodder, but the area under cultivation for fodder crops for the last 25 years has remained static at just 5% of the country’s cropped area leading to a 36% shortage of green fodder and causing overall poor milk productivity. Dry fodder, in form of crop residue and stubble, has, in fact, become costlier than price of milk, impacting farmer’s profits. “We are into genetic improvement and hybrid bovines – but not much will change on front of milk production if cattle don’t eat well,” a bureaucrat told ET. A recent Parliamentary standing committee report flagged off a shortage of 122 million ton dry fodder and 284 million ton shortage of green fodder by 2020 if no intervention is made.The Centre’s plan is increasing the cultivatable area for green fodder to 10 million hectares with an aim for additional production of 250 million tonnes of the same. The Centre will encourage fodder to be grown as a catch crop between wheat-rice cropping seasons. A Fodder & Feed Security Cell will be set up at National, State and Districts level to coordinate and effective implementation of the programme that is expected to kick off from 2017-18.The whole idea is to correct the anomaly wherein while India is the highest milk producer country in the world but the milk production per animal per year is significantly low. “Deficiency in quantity and quality of fodder is one of the major causes for this low animal productivity. The animals need proper feeding to meet their nutrient requirement to express their full genetic production potential,” the government’s plan says. The government’s experience is that while small & marginal farmers collect crop residues for livestock feeding in fodder-deficit states, big cultivators use mechanized harvesting to either dispose of stubble by burning it, leading to the destruction of dry fodder and resultant pollution. It hopes the incentives being planned by it would do the trick.