This case study prepared by Ashelsha Khadse was part of a report What’s at Steak, published by Global Forest Coalition at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Cancun, Mexico from 4-17 December 2017.
Despite India’s booming success in cooperative models of production, especially the dairy cooperative movement that turned it from a milk deficient country to the world’s highest milk producer, there is a growing push towards free trade, privatization and hyper competitiveness.
Such a race to the bottom is changing production models towards more resource-intensive, high-yielding styles of production, and the majority of our farmers—comprising mostly landless, marginal to small ones—are finding it increasingly hard to maintain and keep milch animals as they have traditionally done.