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ABSTRACT
More than 75 per cent of the households in the country are consuming milk. The share of households consuming milk out of home produce in rural India remains below 30 per cent. The per capita milk consumption1 is found to be much higher for the home grown households than those which purchased in most of the States. There exists huge potential for increasing liquid milk marketing by the organised sector- all States in the southern region, all major states in the Northern and Western regions and Bihar and West Bengal in the Eastern Region. The demand for fresh liquid milk is expected at 107 million tonnes for the households' consumption and the total demand of milk including product processing is expected at 218 million tonnes in 2020.
Keywords: Demand for milk, Demand projection, Consumption
JEL: 018, Q11.Q13
CONTEXT
Dairying in India plays an important role in the socio1-economic development of the farmers. It is practiced along with agricultural activities to generate additional income in addition to meet its own household requirement of milk and milk products. Dairy sector contributes more than one-fifth to the agricultural value of output and provides employment to about 21 million people, the majority of whom are resourcepoor (Kumar et ai, 2010). India's milk production growth is much higher than that of the world. It became the largest milk producer globally since 1998 accounting for about 18 per cent of the global production. The per capita availability of milk has increased from 176 grams in 1990-91 to 299 grams in 2012-13 (BAHS, 2014). This has also improved the consumption of milk among the households.
Generally dairy farmers retained some proportion of liquid milk for household consumption and the rest is sold to the available marketing channels. The retention of milk for meeting its own household demand varies from one State to another. Generally, it is believed that cow and buffalo ownership improves milk consumption in the households particularly among children (Bhagowalia et ai, 2012). India is a vast country with significant interstate variations in the consumption of liquid milk. There are limited research findings that have assessed the extent of consumption of milk in the households which own milch animals, i.e, producing households and those which does not own...