Cause of decline in availability of milk and high prices

#1

I have been experiencing a shortage of milk while ordering Akshaykalpa(or sometimes any non tetra pack milk) via Dunzo or Instamart, and if I miss the time slot of its availability in my local store, then it is near impossible to get any milk apart from tetra packs.
Having read through a few articles like 1 and 2
and tweets like this, I’m wondering how long will this shortage remain, and if things are beginning to improve in better cattle fodder management.

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#2

If you can, kindly shift to Akshayakalpa app. We do morning 4 am to 7am deliveries and there is no milk shortage, but for Q commerce we don’t allow them to stock our products, but supplied against fixed indent, hence the stock out.

Meantime, in general, next 2 years we have to brace for milk shortages in the country, we need to get ready for importing milk and milk products, sooner than later.

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#3

@Shashi you explained the reason for this shortage when we met in person. Maybe share that here for the community.

#4

The milk shortage challanges are driven primarily with the following

  1. Lumpy skin disease has impacted substantially on the milk production in key states like Gujrat, Rajastan, MP, and certain areas of Maharashtra, and TN. It has also hit Karanataka very hard. LSD has hit both milking population, heifers (young cows). Hence it will be a while (say 2 years) to recover the cow population to productive herd.

(You know, each cow needed a vaccination called goatpox costing Rs. 10 to save the cow, we have failed our farmers)

  1. Dependancy on the cow feeding on concentrate feed and linking of concentrate feed to commodities prices has shot up the cost of milk production and producing milk at that price has become unviable. Only way to solve this problem is localised fodder and feed production systems. Milk production cost in the country is heavily linked to commodities.

  2. Pandemic issue - during pandemic milk demand fell substantially, and procurement prices hit the bottom, and farmers gave up dairy, as it became unviable. This problem is showing up now as market demand is picked up now.

  3. There is no ground level work is happening in milk production at farm level. Dairy industry in India shows growth in milk industry by moving the milk form unorganised sector to organized sector. 60% of the milk in India still in un organized sector. This impact is showing in the industry already.

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