Techno-economical analysis of crossbreed cattle milk production in Western Himalayas of India

The study was undertaken to analyse the prospects of crossbreed cattle farming in Himachal Pradesh state India. Himachal Pradesh is a hilly state majorly shadowed with snowfall with predominance of hilly terrain (68.65%) (Anonymous, 2017) 1. The state is having self sustained balance between supply and demand with structural change i.e., emigrate from traditional farming practices to modern farming practices results in declining of cost of production and hike in profitability and benefit cost ratio. The research has concluded across the three categories such as small, medium and large category of farmers based upon Standard animal unit (SAU). The net return per liter of milk production from crossbred cattle in overall category was Rs 8.59, whereas, at disaggregate level net returns from crossbred cattle were highest for large category farms (Rs 9.70 per liter), followed medium and least for small category farmers i.e., Rs 7.60 and Rs. 6.80 respectively. The cost per liter of milk production was Rs 28.54 for overall category, whereas, and it was least for large category (Rs 27.66 per liter). Among the cost components the total feed cost alone accounted for about 65.67 percent to the gross cost (GC) across the categories. Among feed cost, concentrate constitutes more than 33.50 percent to the GC. The cost of concentrates varied among categories, such as for small category it was 25.50 percent, for medium category 30.24 percent and for large farmers 32.47 percent of the GC. The maximum likelihood estimates for crossbred cattle across the different farm categories. The results clearly indicate that green fodder, dry fodder, concentrate and labour cost are significant at 5 and 10 percent level of significance and positively influences the milk production. However, labour was found negatively associated with milk production in large category. At the disaggregated level, labour coefficient value (-0.34) indicates that 1 percent increase in the labour results in reduction of milk value by 0.34 percent for large category farms which implied excess use of labour. The coefficient of concentrate (0.55) indicates that 1 percent increase in concentrate results in 0.55 percent increase in milk production at 10 percent level of significance. The household size also negatively (0.07) influenced milk production. Green fodder positively influenced milk production as 0.40 percent with 1 percent increase at 10 percent level of significance. However, in small farm category quantity of green fodder, concentrate and labour cost were positively and significantly influenced milk production at 5 percent level of significance. It was found that 1 percent increase in the green fodder, dry fodder and labour cost increased milk production by 0.20, 0.55 and 0.18 percent respectively. In case of medium farms, green fodder, dry fodder and household size were found affecting milk production positively and significantly by 0.19, 0.60 and 0.18 percent respectively.