Livestock sector in Jharkhand
The livestock sector in Jharkhand
contributes 27% of the value of output from agriculture and allied activities. The
main features of the livestock distribution across land-holding categories are:
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Higher stocking rate of male draught cattle
on larger holdings (>2.00 hectare) .
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Indigenous milch cows are reared by all the categories of farmers.
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Stocking rate of milch animals (cows + buffaloes) ranges from 1000-2500 per 1000
small and marginal farmers indicating the importance of dairying for these farmers.
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Small ruminant and poultry dominate the composition of livestock on holdings of
landless, near landless, marginal and small farmers.
The composition of livestock and poultry
across social groups shows that ST, SC and OBC have higher proportion of small ruminants
and pigs (23-27%) in their stock than the higher castes (Social group others). Overall,
about 37% of the small rumiants and pigs in Jharkhand are owned by ST/SC households
and another 48 percent by the other backward castes.
Apart from social and institutional issues, the breeding, feeding, health care and
management practices followed by the livestock keepers have important bearing on
the production performance of the animals such as cattle, goats and pigs.
The low
yield levels result in very low income generation or in net losses from livestock
rearing. However, as the investment level and the out-of-pocket expenses are nearly
negligible in the livestock production in the rural Jharkhand, the farmers continue
to rear livestock for whatever small production they can get from them. By and large,
livestock production absorbs the family labour and in the absence of alternate employment
opportunities, it provides a source of employment to the rural households, who may
actually be disguisedly unemployed in low income generating subsistence nature of
production system.
In this context livestock based interventions developed through
participatory process of various stakeholders are likely to have high success rate
in achieving its target of improving the livelihood status of the poor livestock
farmers in Jharkhand.
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