Kumaraguru College of Technology – Ritika Verma – 2025

Summary

Ritika Verma partnered with Kumaraguru Institutions as a Climate Corps Fellow to develop a Climate-Smart Dairy Farming Roadmap for Tamil Nadu, to position the state’s dairy sector as both resilient and low emission. The roadmap addresses the critical intersection of climate change, rural livelihoods, and food security.

Goals

The roadmap builds on India’s Net Zero 2070 commitment and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sets out to:

• Enhance Productivity: Raise per-animal milk yield through better breeding, fodder management, and veterinary services.
• Strengthen Climate Resilience: Reduce vulnerability to heat, water scarcity, and disease through adaptive infrastructure, feed innovation, and climate-smart breeds.
• Transform the Value Chain: Expand market access, processing, digital tools, and enterprise opportunities for smallholders, women, and youth.
• Institutional Coordination: Launch a Tamil Nadu Dairy Productivity Mission (TN-DPM) to unify government agencies, cooperatives, financial institutions, and private players.
• Policy Alignment: Integrate dairy into state and national climate strategies, advancing India’s SDG-2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG-13 (Climate Action) targets.

Solutions

Strategic, phased interventions are proposed across the sector:
-Breeding & Genetics: Expand artificial insemination, community breeding farms, and semen banks, combining high-yield crossbreeds with resilient indigenous breeds.
-Feed & Fodder Security: Launch a State Fodder Mission, promote silage and balanced ration, establish district fodder banks.
-Animal Health & Welfare: Strengthen preventive care, expand mobile veterinary units, and widen livestock insurance coverage.
-Climate-Smart Infrastructure: Promote ventilated sheds, shading, renewable energy (biogas, solar chillers), and water-efficient systems.
-Digital Integration: Create a Digital Dairy Dashboard for real-time data and introduce ‘Digital Dairy Bonuses’ to reward farmer participation, with Unified Farmer ID system for real-time monitoring and scheme integration.
-Enterprise & Market Development: Support FPOs, women’s cooperatives, and youth entrepreneurs with credit, processing units, and sustainable branding.
-District Productivity Enhancement Cells: Create dedicated units to address farmer and entrepreneur issues, ensuring faster problem-solving and last-mile support.
-Policy Reforms: Develop a comprehensive Tamil Nadu Dairy Policy uniting productivity, climate, and market objectives with measurable targets.

Potential Impact

The roadmap envisions broad and lasting outcomes:

• Economic: Higher milk yields, improved farmer incomes, stable fodder supply, and enterprise growth, reducing rural poverty and empowering women and youth.
• Environmental: Lower methane intensity per litre of milk, adoption of renewable energy, improved manure-to-energy systems, and water-efficient fodder cultivation.
• Social: Better animal health, reduced farmer drudgery, stronger rural nutrition, and greater inclusion of smallholders, women, and marginalized groups.
• Institutional: A coordinated governance model (TN-DPM) leveraging NABARD, SIDBI, CSR, and state financing for scale-up.