Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Call to allocate more for animal husbandry

Special Correspondent

The sector will help the country in wiping out poverty, says expert

CHENNAI: "A reorientation of policy, planning, research, education and extension interventions in animal husbandry is vital to achieve the goal of making India free from hunger and malnutrition by 2020."

Delivering the eighth annual endowment lecture in the name of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, organised by the Tamilnadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University here on Tuesday, R.K. Samanta, Joint Director (Training), National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad, said the animal husbandry sector made rapid strides in the last five decades despite the "poor priority" given to it. The per capita availability of milk had increased from 129 gm a day to 197 gm and that of egg from 5 to 32 a year between 1951 and 1996. The overall growth was steady, at 4.5 per cent.

The impressive achievements, he said, were made under severe constraints of finance, poor infrastructure, pricing, marketing and post-harvest losses. The financial allocation was a meagre 5.7 per cent, less than one per cent of the total annual plan allocation.

Dr. Samanta said the planners should reckon that the sector was providing employment to almost 18 million people, many of them rural women.

Even now, it was possible to set things right by properly blending agriculture with animal husbandry, giving a greater thrust on development and allocating more funds to the sector.

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