notes+on+Nils+presentation

Notes on presentation Progress in India – reported by Nils Teufel

Uttarakhand is quite marginal for India in terms of development. IFAD office has been very involved from the beginning for considering MilkIT activities in India. Therefore, sites were selected also because of IFAD’s activities.

Steps so far: • Comprehensive stakeholder consultations. • Site selection process driven by partner availability. • One of the Federations to be as a partner was seriously considered, however, discarded later for a number of reasons.

Once the decision had been made about partners, project started to become more “real” to plan operations towards site selection. Decision not to work in the site with the best potential, neither go to the one with the least.

Institutional assessments performed • Mapping of NGOs – within districts. • Consider logistics in terms of driving distances. • Decision to work in Almora District and Bageshwar District.

Characterization of different dairy value chain(s) in the state initiated • Cooperative dairy federation – self-help groups • Federations formed by the IFAD program • Major part marked via informal traders, private dairy, direct marketing nearby town

Self-help groups have large variation, in quantity of milk available and unknown/ uncontrolled quality.

A number of studies have been initiated along the dairy value chain.

1. Input services study – needs in-depth • Anchal (state-owned cooperative) – some services • Federation – some services

2. Production system study – farming system • Proportional land not under agricultural cultivation proportionally large; from there feed for livestock sourced, particularly from the forest. • Explore profitability of potential investments on private land. • A lot of income comes from non-agricultural activities, women play increasingly stronger role! • What role are crop residues playing? Underutilized? • Market-based feeds are starting to emerge. • Head numbers of cattle are decreasing due to less land available, children going to school; increasing tendency of keeping specialized dairy animals. • There is already quite some knowledge around and possible known interventions can be chosen from. • Large proportion of animals is of local, low-producing

3. Importance of milk • Many people are vegetarians and milk is the only animal-source food • In rural areas almost everybody keeps dairy animals • Small markets in small markets, but only slowly growing – so doubling consumption is not very likely

4. Site selection • Decided to work in 2 districts and chose blocks – 1 block per each district; criteria for block selection are being put together • New question are coming up: How large will a site be? How many villages/ clusters? • Densities of cattle and buffalo per area land utilized being mapped to decide some minimum values • Mapping of milk marketing institutions – you can see the effect of IFAD project • Market access, only half of the villages have access to paved roads – relatively low shows marginality of the region

Brigitte Maass Tanga, 24 Apr 2012