Volume - Indian Dairy Association

41approach and operations indicate the potential to deliver various services torebuild the value chain.Indeed, this is the only sector where business planning is done to a greatextent and policy for clean and economic production to meet the futurechallenges are discussed, after reviewing the present value chains.Empowering the Dairy Federations to take a lead to re‐establish the valuechain based on the business opportunities can accelerate the growth in thelivestock sector and enable the dairy husbandry programme to provide gainfulself employment to small farmers in the country.However, many of the State Dairy Federations in the country are suffering dueto poor administration, weak business plan and over‐domination of vestedinterests at the cost of the dairy farmers. To overcome this, a new generationCooperatives and Producer Companies have emerged on a pilot scale whoseperformance on a wider scale is yet to be observed.5.12 Biological Production Units: Many of the States have their VeterinaryBiological Units for production of vaccines, antigens, diagnostic kits and alsofor providing disease investigation services to farmers through decentralizeddisease investigation laboratories. Many of these laboratories havesuccessfully producing all the required vaccines. However, providing supportservices to the decentralized DI laboratory and taking up disease surveillance inthe field has been a weak link. This being an independent activity providingcritical support for animal production, additional capacity building andstrengthening is required. Biological production units and disease investigationlaboratories play a very critical role in promoting clean milk production whilebringing down the cost of production.5.13 State Agricultural Universities: The policy behind the establishment ofState Agricultural Universities, Veterinary Colleges and KVK’s was to supportthe farmers by way of transfer of technology through training and fielddemonstration as well as to design research studies based on the fieldproblems. However, many of the veterinary faculties in Universities are oftenisolated from the field. As a result, this close interaction between the farmersand scientists has been disconnected. This has severely affected the deliveryof services and transfer of new technologies. Nevertheless, some of theUniversities are involved in breeding of forage crops and development of good