DAIRY PRODUCTION AND ITS IMPLICATION IN HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN ASIAN TROPICS AND SUBTROPICS: SOME FINDINGS FROM INDONESIA AND NEPAL

Abstract

Indonesia and Nepal two far away countries too different from each in many
aspects in fact also have some very similar aspects as well. Both are multi ethnic
country and agriculture is one of main sector of the economy. Most of the people in
rural region depend on it for their livelihood. In both the countries these rural people are small holders in the sense they own little assets and production means, such as, land, livestock, physical constructions, machinery, etc. As such, they carry out labor-intensive crop-livestock mixed farming to make best use of their self-resources. Dairying (dairy fanning) singles out to be one main component of such mixed faming system suitable for such small holders to under take as they can be relatively started with little capital, can be managed basically by family labor and generates income within a short period and almost daily. Additionally, it also suits the govemment policy of addressing the problems of (disguised) unemployment and under employment and increasing the domestic milk production to meet the ever growing domestic demand of milk, which in turn improves the nutritional health of the people and saves dear foreign currency used for importing the milk. Hence both the governments have been promoting it through various development programs supported by needed know how, services, capital and milk procuring through extension and cooperative sytems.

The household level features of the dairy farming also have strikingly structural
similarities in terms of share of the populations engaged in it as their main job, average number of dairy animal holding, ratio of dry and milking animal, average milk production per animal per year, usage of self resources, strategy managements, an so on. In both the cases labor, concentrate and roughage fodder are the three largest components of the production cost, together constituting more than 90% of the total cost. Milk is the single most component of the income. Production ranges from 75% to 90% depending the farm size in Nepal and location specificity in Indonesia. Finally, the net return to farm, inclusive of evaluated return to self resources sum up to be between $600 to $800 per annum in both the countries.