Milk and Dairy in India’s Development Path
Lessons, challenges and perspectives
Final seminar of the “IndiaMilk” project
New Delhi, India International Centre (IIC), Annexe, Lecture Room I
Tuesday 17 – Wednesday 18, December 2019
At time when food chain sustainability emerges as a key issue worldwide, the success of the Indian dairy sector in combining a fast growing, recycling based and pro-poor development its 70 million farmers producing milk appears as a strikingly interesting case study. This has resulted from a strong crop-livestock integration and from a very inclusive cooperative model sustained by national policies. Both are challenged today, with the reconfiguration of cropping systems and agrarian relations, the milk-oriented intensification of livestock practices, and, in some areas, the emergence of bigger dairy holdings. Furthermore, the progressive liberalisation of the dairy market since the 1990's has supported the emergence of new private and cooperative operators. The general objective of the IndiaMilk project was to understand the past and undergoing transformation of Indian dairy systems – as a whole and in its diversity – and to assess to which extent it represents a sustainable development model, able to address jointly food security, social inclusion and environmental issues.
The final seminar of the “IndiaMilk” research project aims at sharing the results obtained and have them discussed by a broader public of academics and professionals from different institutions and disciplines, as well as exploring lines for common works in the future.
Introduction (Tuesday 17th December 2019)
08:45 Registration
09:30 Welcoming of participants
Prof. Rajeswari Raina (SNU)
09:35 Inaugural address
Shri Girish Sohani (President & Managing Trustee, BAIF)
09:45 The IndiaMilk project: raison d’être and questions addressed Aubron etal 2019 - IndiaMilk research project - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Aubron, M. Dervillé, B. Dorin, M. Vigne and S. Bainville
10:00 The intellectual ambition: combining different conceptual frameworks and methods
C. Aubron, M. Dervillé, B. Dorin, M. Vigne and S. Bainville
10:10 The final seminar in New Delhi: objectives and organisation
C. Aubron, M. Dervillé, B. Dorin, M. Vigne and S. Bainville
10:20 Tea & coffee break
1st session (17/12/2019) – Fields surveys and agrarian diagnoses (WP1)
Place of livestock farming in Indian agriculture and dairy farms differentiation
10:40 Livestock farming in Indian agrarian change through 13 agrarian diagnoses Aubron etal 2019 - Livestock farming in Indian agrarian change - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Aubron, S. Bainville and O. Philippon
11:10 Producing milk today in India: a diversity of structures and practices Aubron etal 2019 - Producing milk today in India, a diversity of structures and practices - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Aubron, V. Kleinpeter, O. Philippon and S. Bainville
11:30 Is dairy farming benefiting the poor? Compared economic assessments at the farm level Aubron etal 2019 - Is dairy farming benefiting the poor - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Aubron, S. Bainville and O. Philippon
11:40 The Indian Dairy Households through the IHDS surveys (2004-05 and 2011-12) Dorin etal 2020 - The Indian Dairy Households through the IHDS surveys - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
B. Dorin, A. Sehgal and C. Bouvart
12:00 Discussions
Discussants: Vikas Rawal (JNU) and A.B. Pande (BAIF) + General discussion
13:00 Lunch
2nd session (17/12/2019) – Environmental assessments (WP2)
Problematic intensification in multifunctional crop and livestock systems
14:00 Resilience of draught power and manure: insights from 3 case-studies in South India Cochetel etal 2019 - Resilience of draught power and manure - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Cochetel, O. Philippon, C. Aubron and L. Ruiz
14:20 Inputs intensive irrigated agriculture and crop-livestock disintegration: problematic nitrogen balances in a Gujarati village Aubron etal 2019 - Nitrogen balances in a Gujarati village - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
C. Aubron, M. Vigne, O. Philippon, C. Lucas, P. Lesens, S. Upton, P. Salgado and L. Ruiz
14:40 Impacts of the Indian dairy farming development on global environment: fossil energy use and GHG emissions in contrasted production systems Vigne etal 2019 - Fossil energy use and GHG emissions - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
M. Vigne, N. Caumartin, J. Weller and C. Aubron
15 :00 Discussions
Discussants: Tushaar Shah (IWMI) and Nandan Nawn (TERI Univ.) + General discussion
16 :00 Tea & coffee break
3rd session (17/12/2019) – Institutional economics of dairy cooperatives (WP3)
Dairy producers’ access to market and inclusiveness
16:30 Introduction Dervillé 2019 - WP3 introduction and conclusion - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
M. Dervillé
16:35 The Anand model: formal and informal rules structuring productive forces Dervillé etal 2019 - The Anand model - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
M. Dervillé, L. Jenin, B. Dorin and C. Aubron
17:00 Milk Producers Companies: an institutional innovation to face liberalisation and save smallholder’s ownership? Jenin and Dervillé 2019 - Milk Producers Companies - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
L. Jenin and M. Dervillé
17:20 Dairy farming and livelihoods: lessons learnt from 6 Indian villages Dervillé and Gaillard 2019 - Dairy farming and livelihoods - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
M. Dervillé and C. Gaillard
17:35 Heterogeneous diffusion of the Indian dairy cooperative model: a district-wise analysis Dervillé etal 2019 - Heterogeneous diffusion of hte Indian dairy cooperative model - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
M. Dervillé, B. Dorin and D. Raboisson
17:50 Discussions
Discussants: Sukhpal Singh (IIMA) and Meeta Punjabi Mehta (Creative Agri Solutions) + General discussion
4th session (18/12/2019) – Macro transformations and macro bio-economics (WP4)
Indian dairy in the metabolic transformation of the Indian economy
09:00 Tea & coffee
10:00 Indian dairy, social metabolism and international trade: an historical analysis Daviron 2019 - Indian dairy, social metabolism and international trade - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
B. Daviron
10:20 Feeding over 500 million Indian Livestock Units: a tentative retro-prospective model Dorin etal 2019 - Feeding over 500 million Indian Livestock Units - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
B. Dorin, D. Garoyan, S. Mondal, C. Morel and A. Mahadevan
10:40 Structural transformation with limited supply of land: dynamics of land, livestock and labour productivities in India since the 1960s Dorin 2019 - Structural transformation with limited supply of land - IndiaMilk final seminar.pdf
B. Dorin
11:00 Discussions
Discussants: Richa Kumar (IIT-Delhi) and Himanshu (JNU, CSH) + General discussion
12:30 Lunch
5th session (18/12/2019) – Seminar participants’ feedback and collective brainstorming
Chair Prof. Rajeswari Raina (SNU)
13:30 During this final key session, seminar participants will be invited to give their feedback on the results of IndiaMilk project and to contribute to a brainstorming on the main lessons, challenges and perspectives related to “Milk and Dairy in India’s Development Path”. We will collectively intend to address questions such as:
- Green and White revolutions of India: complementarity or competition?
- Operation flood: above all a buffer role for employment and incomes of the rural poor?
- India's impressive growth in milk production: industrialisation without capitalisation but fossil energy and labour?
- Horizon 2050 with 1.6 billion inhabitants: size and functions of the Indian herd? large industrial farms versus small ecological farms?
- Agroecology and livestock: towards a new socio-technical regime led by India?
- …/…
complemented or even replaced by questions that emerged during the previous sessions.
16:00 Concluding/Closing remarks
C. Aubron (Head of the project “IndiaMilk”)
The IndiaMilk project
Abstract
At time when food chain sustainability emerges as a key issue worldwide, the success of the Indian dairy sector in combining a fast growing, recycling based and pro-poor development for its 70 million farmers producing milk appears as a strikingly interesting case study. This has resulted from a strong crop-livestock integration within agro-ecosystems and from a very inclusive cooperative model sustained by national policies. Both are challenged today, with the reconfiguration of cropping systems and agrarian relations, the milk-oriented intensification of livestock practices based on external inputs, and, in some areas, the emergence of bigger dairy holdings. Furthermore, the progressive liberalisation of the dairy market since the 1990's has supported the emergence of new private and cooperative operators developing their own strategies for milk collection and milk products marketing.
The general objective of the project is to understand the undergoing transformation of Indian dairy systems – as a whole and in its diversity – and to assess to which extent it represents a sustainable development model, able to address jointly food security, social inclusion and environmental issues. More specifically, we intend to come up with answers to the following questions: Who are the Indian dairy farmers and what are their practices? What are the extent and consequences for the ecosystems of the decline in multifunctional livestock and of the dairy intensification? What conditions are required for the rural poor to really benefit from the dairy development? How does dairy farming fit into the more global biophysical and economic development path of the Indian subcontinent and what is its sustainability in this modernisation context?
To achieve this objective, we propose an original multidisciplinary, multi-scalar and long-term perspective approach, drawing together several sources of data coming from national statistics and surveys as well as interviews carried out during long and meticulous fieldwork. We combine two specific conceptual frameworks – agrarian system (WP1) and market functioning institutional analyses (WP3) – with two sets of methods for environmental impact assessment (WP2) and national biophysical accounting (WP4). We consider five interlocked scales of analysis, using a clear concept for each of them and putting the “local” at the core of the research, where the coevolution between ecosystems, farming practices and market insertion can be characterised.
The expected outcomes of the project are threefold: (i) a better understanding and assessment of the Indian dairy systems and their transformation; (ii) the further development and spreading of methods allowing the understanding of agricultural systems; (iii) the identification of levers of action for supporting the sustainable development of the dairy systems, in India and possibly worldwide.
The IndiaMilk project
Project structure
Short bio of the main speakers
Claire AUBRON (Montpellier SupAgro) – claire.aubron@supagro.fr
Claire Aubron is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Ulm and graduate of AgroParisTech in France. She made her PhD in Comparative Agriculture on the development of dairy farming in the Andes, combining an ethnographic field work in a Peruvian rural community and a dairy market functioning analysis at national level, taking into account the liberalization process. Since 2007, she is associate professor at Montpellier SupAgro (https://en.montpellier-supagro.fr/), working on livestock farming systems, agrarian systems and animal products value chains. Her research, carried out in the research unit “Mediterranean and Tropical Livestock Farming Systems” (SELMET, https://umr-selmet.cirad.fr/en), mainly dealt from 2007 to 2013 with livestock farming systems, pastoralism and quality schemes in animal products in French Mediterranean areas. She has a strong interest in the role played by livestock farming in the development processes involving smallholder farms and that is the reason why she embarked in 2014 on an 18-month mobility project in India. Hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and associated with the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH) in New Delhi, she initiated a research based on several field studies in Gujarat and Bihar on the trade-offs between increasing milk production, social inclusion and environmental impact in Indian dairy farming. Since 2015, with a team involving a dozen of researchers, she conducts the IndiaMilk research project which aims at going further on these issues, combining disciplines and scales of analysis.
Bruno DORIN (CSH, Cirad) – bruno.dorin@csh-delhi.com
Began working in Paris for the French
Ministry of agriculture and the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA)
on French or European issues (farm bankruptcies, 1992 CAP reform) prior to two
long stints in India over eight years, first in Andhra Pradesh for doctoral
work (1990-1991), then in New Delhi (1995-2000) as Director of the Centre de
Sciences Humaines (CSH). Returned to France in 2000 to teach economics (ESAP,
Toulouse).
Joined CIRAD in 2002 (www.cirad.fr, Montpellier) and
CIRED (www.centre-cired.fr, Paris). Has
been involved in several international research projects (value sharing in the
cocoa-chocolate industry, agricultural greenhouse gases emission/sink,
food-biofuel competition in land use). In 2006, began to develop Agribiom, a
quantitative tool for analysing the world’s production, trade and use of
biomass, in order to undertake collective future scenario-building such as
“Agrimonde” (Paillard, Treyer & Dorin, 2011), hybrid models such as the
“Nexus Land-Use” (Souty, Dorin & al., 2012) and worldwide analyses on
labour productivity and structural transformation (e.g. Dorin 2017).
Marie DERVILLE (ENSFEA) – marie.derville@educagri.fr
Agronomic Engineers (AgroParisTech), she worked from 2003 to 2009 as a consultant on value chains’ development for various organizations (Association, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, FAO, French Livestock Institute) in Europe, Afghanistan and Bhutan.
She did her PhD in Economics, between AgroParisTech and the National Institute of Agronomic Research (INRA Toulouse), on the adaptation of mountain dairy chains to the liberalisation of the European dairy market from 2009-2012. She obtained a medal from the French Academy of Agriculture for the originality and relevance of her work. Since 2012, she is associate professor in Economics and Management at the National Higher School for Agricultural Education (ENSFEA: http://www.ensfea.fr) in Toulouse. She teaches organisation theory, collective resources management and institutional economics. Her research, carried out in the Research Laboratory on the Economy, Politics and Social Systems (LEREPS, http://lereps.sciencespo-toulouse.fr), mainly deals since 2013 with the adaptation of dairy chains to the liberalisation and increasing societal demand. Considering the social dimension of markets, she highlights the role of collective action in resources building and distribution in European and Indian contexts.
Mathieu VIGNE (Cirad) – mathieu.vigne@cirad.fr
Mathieu Vigne made is PhD from 2009 to 2012 on pluri-energy efficiency of dairy production systems in contrasted production contexts (Western France; Southern Mali, Reunion Island Highlands). After a postdoctorate at Embrapa (Belem, Brazil) on Amazonian family farming systems, he joined in 2014 the Selmet (“Mediterranean and Tropical Livestock Farming Systems” https://umr-selmet.cirad.fr/en) research unit from Cirad. Since, he works on environmental interactions between livestock production systems and territories. He mainly deals with fossil energy use and greenhouse gases emissions of livestock production systems and role of livestock production systems in territorial metabolism and has been involved in different research projects in West Africa (Burkina Faso and Senegal) and Indian Ocean (India, Madagascar and Reunion Island). He is currently hosted by Fifamanor, a national Malagasy agricultural research centre, at Antsirabe, Madagascar.
Sébastien BAINVILLE (Montpellier SupAgro) – sebastien.bainville@supagro.fr
Sébastien Bainville is agronomist. He made his PhD in agricultural economics on the development of family farming in Brazil. Former researcher in Cirad and consultant in FAO, he is now associate professor in Montpellier SupAgro-IRC (Tropical Agriculture Institute, https://www.montpellier-supagro.fr) working on agrarian systems, family farming and agricultural policies. His research carried out in the research unit “Markets, Organisations, Institutions and Agent Strategy” (MOISA, https://umr-moisa.cirad.fr), dealt with agrarian systems in Nicaragua and Ecuador and with agrarian changes in cotton producing regions in Western Africa (Mali and Burkina Faso). Since 2015, in the IndiaMilk research project, he works on agrarian systems evolutions in India.
Benoît DAVIRON (Cirad) – benoit.daviron@cirad.fr
Benoit Daviron is Senior Researcher at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad) and consulting professor in SupAgro Montpellier, France. He has been visiting scholar in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics of the University of California in Berkeley and responsible for economics and social sciences in Cirad.
For the last 30 years he has been working on agricultural trade and food policies in developing countries with a special focus on the questions of governance and regulation. He has published widely on issue of food policy, trade in agricultural commodities, as well as commodity chain in developing countries. In 2011, he has been the team leader for the preparation of the first report of the Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE).
The IndiaMilk project is supported by Agropolis Fondation under the reference ID 1605-046 through the « Investissements d’avenir » programme (Labex Agro:ANR-10-LABX-0001-01) » http://www.agropolis-fondation.fr/?lang=en