Title: ‘Jansamruddhi’ – A Dairy Development Project

Location: 10 villages, Nanded dist., Maharashtra.

Beneficiaries: Dairy Farmers

Introduction: Sanskriti Samvardhan Mandal (SSM) is a
voluntary organization established in 1959 with an aim to educate and empower
the deprived rural communities. SSM is actively involved through value added education,
skill development, agriculture, natural resource management, livelihood development
and animal welfare. For more, please visit www.ssmandal.net 

Background: Primary & Secondary Agriculture has always
been the major activity of SSM since its inception. The qualified team of
Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK - Agriculture Science Centre) awarded by Indian
Council of Agriculture Research focuses on major components viz. introduction
of new technologies, training & capacity building and promotion of
secondary agriculture. While pursuing consistent research in agriculture, SSM
strives to lead the farming communities to a next level of prosperity. Unfortunately,
for the past three years marathwada region was suffering from severe drought
which had disturbed the livelihood of all the farmers. Taking this into
account, SSM has come up with a livelihood development project which can
provide assured income to the farmers throughout their life. Considering the
potential, initially we have introduced a milk collection center on 11st October 2016 covering 10 nearby villages.

Goal: Socio-economic
empowerment of the village based milk producers in the region.

The Need: Within a short span of time, the center has emerged as a
trustworthy and supportive enterprise enabling the farmers empower day by day. The
overwhelming response from the dairy farmers and women especially has proved
that the project needs to be expanded and spread its outreach to cover maximum
number of beneficiaries. The unit will run on cooperative basis to benefit the
farmers exclusively. With respect to expand the project, we have listed three
major components.

1. 
Training and Extension Program: It is being envisaged that to promote dairying as a commercially
venture for self employment there lies an imminent need for capacity build up
of the producers at the village level, wherein promotional activities would
have to be provided for. Along with that, the project staff needs to be trained
in order to ensure effective regulation of milk price payment, accounting and
other daily process.

2.  
Technical Input Program: The inputs will be provided to the milch animals of milk producers
affiliated to the Dairy Cooperative Network so as to optimize/maximize the
level of milk being produced by the milch animals as per their inherent
capacity. It is being realized that the milk producers are unaware of or not
really convinced with the importance of balanced cattle feed for enhancement of
milk production. Under the proposed head a whole gamut of inputs are being
proposed viz: Green Fodder Mini kits/ Vaccination/ Mineral Mixture/ UMLB/
Balanced Cattle Feed/ Chemical treatment of Dry Fodder for nutritional
enhancement etc.

3. 
Upgradation and Infrastructure Development: Under the project, it has envisaged that the
current level of milk procurement would go up in the coming days. In the
context, increased levels of milk being so procured would need to be marketed
effectively, a New Chilling Center and other accessories need to be installed
together with up-gradation & modernization of Dairy Units in the region. As
per the proposed plan the proposed initiative would be commercially empowering
venture for the masses in the region.

Sustainability: The KVK is working on six agri-allied sectors
viz. Agronomy, Horticulture, Plant Protection, Home Science, Agriculture
Engineering and Animal Husbandry. It has dynamic subject matter specialist,
quality infrastructure and other resources which can be exploited to develop
the dairy unit and ensure sustainability of the project. 

With this aim, we hereby propose you to support
and guide us to expand the livelihood development project. We, at SSM request
you to kindly consider the proposal and respond us positively. I look forward
to have your support for the project Jansamruddhi. Thanking you,