Clean Milk Production in Indian Dairying: Adoption Status and Application of Logit Model

Clean Milk Production (CMP) is defined as the milk coming from healthy milch animal possessing normal flavour, devoid of dirt and filth containing permissible limit of bacteria and essentially free from adulterants, pathogens, various toxins, abnormal residues, pollutants and metabolites. In spite of the efforts in Clean Milk Production (CMP) programmes initiated by Government of India, still there is a need to emphasize on its field level diffusion and adoption in Indian dairying. In this context, the present study was carried out with the specific objectives to assess the adoption status of CMP; to determine the major constraints perceived by farmers; and to identify factors affecting adoption of CMP in Indian dairying using primary data from 360 dairy farmers from four states of North India.The adoption status revealed that majority of the respondents partially followed CMP followed by non-adoption in the study area. Majority of the respondents adopted CMP in dairying since more than 9 years and was however, carried out by default. There was a highly significant difference among the respondents across the states with regards to adoption of CMP in dairying. The application of Binomial Logit model revealed that Chi-square value of 17.435 showed that likelihood ratio statistics are highly significant in the study. The variables ‘distance to veterinary institution’ or ‘animal healthcare centre’ and education were significantly associated with the probability that the respondent will be a partial adopter of CMP in dairying. The majority of farmers expressed that adoption of CMP was by-default and hence perceived that they lacked knowledge/information about CMP and its importance. Since the farmers faced various problems leading to lesser adoption of CMP, there is a need to analyse these problems and find suitable solutions for the effective diffusion and adoption of CMP. The study also recommends for need based long-run study at field conditions on participatory mode to promote CMP at field conditions.