Marketing of Milk and Milk Products in India: Status, Issues, and Strategies

This paper analyses the issues in the marketing of milk and milk products in India. Dairying has become an important secondary source of income for millions of rural families and has assumed the most important role in providing employment and income-generating opportunities, particularly for marginal and women farmers. In spite of various developments in the dairy sector over a period of time, milk marketing in India remains grossly primitive compared to its western counterparts. It begins with the largely unregulated sector which handles the majority of the milk production, presence of numerous intermediaries which take advantage of producers’ weakness, lack of proper infrastructure for transportation, distribution, and storage. Cooperative dairy sector has played an important role in the development of the Indian dairy sector by linking village cooperative dairy producers with the markets and providing fair cost and quality inputs and services to the farmers. While in case of NDCS households, marketing channels remains traditional and maximum marketable surplus in milk was sold through informal channels, especially private traders and direct sale to consumer. Changing the dairy-cooperative laws and regulations can reduce the unorganized sector’s role in milk marketing.