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Don’t ask the farmer at Bhilawadi village in Maharashtra’s Sangli district what he’s doing with a personal digital assistant (PDA). You may get booed and even ‘mooed’ at the ignorance.
Unlike in cities where the young and hip use the handheld device as a fashion statement, the farmer in Bhilawadi uses a more complex form of the same machine as a productivity enhancement tool for his dairy and cattle farming business. What’s more, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips help him attain efficiencies through proper inventory tracking and management of cows and their yield.
Technology-use has got a completely different dimension in this village. Explains Vishwas Chitale, partner at Chitale Dairy: “We couldn’t have done it on our own. So, we herded up.” When an entire village’s cattle population is taken collectively, it makes sense for a para veterinarian to obtain information through RFID tags that help record everything from milk yield, health parameters to feed data of this herd. For a chip to work, it can be fixed to an animal’s ear. The RFID tag can be read only when a pocket PC or PDA is close to it and that prevents any kind of tampering of data, he explains.
The modern dairy has achieved considerable success with the use of active RFID tags. For its own buffalo farm, the dairy has used DeLaval’s software DelPro. Says Chitale, “We use the DeLaval equipment in our farm. But for our suppliers we have used the Bombay Veterinary Hospital’s RFID technology.” The technology apparently won the first prize from the World Bank in a competition two years ago.
Dr Abdul Samad, who heads the department of medicine, Bombay Veterinary Hospital explains, “Under our project, an animal is traceable throughout its lifetime. In most cases a farmer brings his animal to a veterinary doctor only if it suffers health problems, while in reality 80% animals have sub-clinical problems.”
The dairy now has access to all kinds of information and it can plan its business operations on the basis of that. For instance, over-production of milk in any particular season is directly linked to nutrition. “Post monsoon, with greenery in abundance, milk production generally rises by 20-30%,” says CS Thomas, group dairy expert, buffaloes, DeLaval Pvt Ltd. However, the farm has a unique feeding system that feeds the buffaloes correctly. It has installed electronic transponder IDs for animals that ensure that a buffalo can never eat more than a certain programmed portion of daily ration at one time. “The biggest advantage that farmers see in this equipment is that it allows detection. Every 21 days delay in impregnating the animal costs the farmer in feed. Chitale Dairy has a rate of annual calving, which is 18-24 months in the field. Additionally, it has installed ultra sound machines that have success rates of 50-55%,” Thomas remarked.
Thomas, however, pointed out the areas of improvement. “Our buffalo population is over 75 million but we have no records and they are priced at Rs 30-40,000 per head, while Italian buffaloes can charge over Rs 4 lakh. We must explore the opportunity of exporting our livestock.”
If corporates enter this field, investments would be Rs 3-4 crore and payback would be in six years. Currently, Indian milk production is around 89 million tonnes annually, of which 55% is buffalo milk, with a cow population of over 50 million and over 75 million buffaloes.
For milk production to double, the first thing is to improve animal health. While this requires simple things like washing hands before milking and following other basic hygiene practices, a little bit of innovative technology will also help dramatically.
Submitted Date: Aug 28, 2007
Source: Economic Times
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