Orissa’s New Livestock Sector Policy Framework is proposed along the following Seven Key Thrust Areas:

3.1 Capacitate and equip the rural poor to use livestock production as the instrument to enhance household income, supplement family nutrition and to protect rural livelihood systems, giving special emphasis to women.

Livestock production in Orissa is predominantly the endeavour of the small holders. Marginal and small farmers account for some 80 per cent of the total operational holdings. Together with the landless they own 60 per cent of the milch animals, 55 per cent of the draught animals, 75 per cent of the poultry, over 80 per cent of the goat and almost the entire sheep and pig populations and over half of them live below the poverty line. Women play a crucial role in the day-to-day management of livestock.

Income from livestock is therefore a substantial supplement to the overwhelmingly subsistence farming systems in rural Orissa. Enabling them to maximize livestock income can make all the difference between subsistence and progressively viable farming systems. A critical role the Government proposes to play, therefore, is to help them maximize returns on hitherto free resources of crop residues, grazing and family labour. For this several specific policies are proposed.

1. Redesign and reconfigure the input delivery service under the Government to serve as a protective armour around the small producers and their subsistence farming systems.
   Animal health care and breeding services are the two most important services that the state now provides free to the livestock producers. Improving the quality of these services and their usefulness to the producers is the prime consideration under the new policy. There is increasing evidence that farmers prefer good quality paid services to poor quality free service.
   
   In order to make these services improve their quality, reach out to the farmers whom it seeks to serve and becomes accountable, the Government will progressively make veterinary and artificial insemination services, mobile practices operating within their existing jurisdictions and delivering the services at the farmers door-step, as paid inputs. Under the new policy the Government will permit the Government employed Veterinarians, Livestock Inspectors and Inseminators to practice their profession / trade and to charge for the services delivered at the farmers’ door-step at market rates. These reforms will be implemented in a phased manner; first in well developed areas, which can absorb the change and work it to their advantage. Extension of the policy and introduction of the new delivery systems in other areas will follow an economic change scale.

2. Equip and empower the small producers with information and skills to maximize returns, through appropriate technologies and self help approach to problem solving.
   
   There are many services and inputs needed by livestock owners in the day to day management of their livestock enterprise and most of these do not need the services of a qualified Veterinarian or Livestock Inspector. The magnitude of the task is so large that the only solution is to create such skills among the users – the small holders themselves- in their villages. The tasks are veterinary first aid, vaccination of birds and animals, ecto and endo parasite control, innovative feed supplementing techniques, shelter innovations and candling of desi eggs for hatching. These are all simple skills needed in villages constantly. Young men and women from the small holder households can be trained to practise these skills, provide service to the small holders and even earn a small income for their services, addressing men and women equally.

3. Promote and nurture grass root level participatory bodies all over the state, as the organic link between the Animal Husbandry Department and the small holders.
   
   Just as in the case of inputs and services to the scattered small holders, training them for various skills required for the day-to-day management of their livestock enterprise, is also a task outside the size and scope of the State Department of Fisheries and Animal Resources Development The Department’s task is to assess and quantify the training needs, to structure and package the training programmes and to farm them out to grass root level bodies all over the state for implementation.
   
   Several forms of such grass root level bodies are possible: Producers Co-operatives, Breeders’ Associations, Self Help Groups and Voluntary Organizations. These organizations can form the organic link between the Department and the small holders as well as the conduit for transfer of technologies, skill training, extension support and even inputs.
   
   The Government and the Department will kick start the movement of promoting grass roots bodies in a few chosen districts and nurture them as live models for other districts and areas to follow on their own. The Government would encourage and support local initiative in building up such organizations / groups, in any area in the state. A budget for structuring and promoting the organic link would be a part of the policy implications.

3.2 Promote adoption of appropriate technologies, enhance productivity, increase effectiveness and ensure returns proportionate to the investment of time, energy and resources that small holders, particularly women, make for livestock development and management.

Government policy would focus on aggressive strategies to integrate the small producer in the larger process of sectoral growth. A critical area for experimentation and promotion towards this is the intermediate production system, which enables the small holder to gradually integrate the highly productive modern technology and management into his traditional system. Introducing half bred milch animals into the traditional small holder households is an excellent example for the intermediate production system, which not only gives some high production features, but also preserves some of the ruggedness of the local animals he is used to. There are many others like this involving other species of livestock and poultry.

These intermediate production systems depend on high technologies like Artificial Insemination (AI), the most critical tool that the science has given to animal production. Orissa is yet to exploit the tool to the full advantage of its many milk producers, in spite of establishing very large infrastructure and skill pool. Restructuring the management of the AI system is the critical reform for establishing intermediate production systems. The new livestock sector policy seeks to transfer the task of generating high quality AI inputs like genetically evaluated AI bulls, frozen semen and liquid nitrogen and their supply to all AI practitioners, to a new organization, incorporated as a registered society, “The Orissa Livestock Resources Development Society”. AI delivery itself will be reorganized as mobile service delivering a vastly improved AI service at the farmers’ door-step.

Graded pigs with exotic donors for higher body weights, moving in genetically selected bucks and rams for goat and sheep breeding into small holder units for selective breeding and custom bred desi breeding cocks for the backyard poultry are other examples for engineering intermediate production systems in small holdings.

To promote intermediate production system, Government will mobilize credit through commercial banks for mini dairy schemes, small animals and poultry schemes. There will also be a subsidy package similar to the Government of India scheme “Special Livestock Breeding Programme” (SLBP), along with concessional credit scheme for the bottom end of the small holder spectrum.

3.3 Encourage growth and modernization of the livestock sector in a well balanced format where all species of livestock are allowed to grow and develop in proportion to their livelihood intensity and potential to enhance livelihoods; not merely in proportion to their population size.
Development of the livestock sector in Orissa so far, had largely been monopolized by the bovine. Sheep, goat, pig and poultry are far more livelihood intensive and are owned by the bottom end of the small holder households. The new livestock sector policy will incorporate adequate safe guards to balance the species wise outlay of the State and Central plan, largely in proportion to the livelihood implication of these species of livestock.

These interventions actually will comprise measures for 

1. skill training, subsidies for acquiring breeding stock like genetically selected cocks for the backyard system, bucks, rams and boars for goat, sheep and pig breeding respectively; and concessional credit for household level enterprises, on one plane;

2. Breeding and selection programmes for all species, on the second and 

3. Aggressive promotional activities for building up an organic link of peoples’ bodies outside the Government, so essential for the sub sector, on the third plane.

3.4 Resolute direct action by the Government in such areas as disease control and eradication and quality control mechanisms.

Curative veterinary care generates only private good while prevention and control of animal diseases generates enormous public good to the advantage of the state and the nation as a whole. Control of diseases will reduce the yield gap and cut down the annuals losses due to diseases - Rs.2.5 billion - in the case of Orissa. Under the new livestock policy, public funds will increasingly be directed towards public good disease prevention and control and less for curative veterinary care.

The new livestock policy will enable the launch of a state wide FMD control programme as part of a national control programme, an active and responsive disease reporting system and disease containment zone in the most productive areas in the state.

3.5 Devise ways to ensure that the sector grows with the active and gainful participation of the resource poor throughout the state.

For quite some time to come, the State Government needs to devise and implement specific policies and programmes to enable the small holders to progressively approach viable levels of efficiency and output, through better access to credit, better quality credit and some subsidy support.

The Government is not in favour of subsidy as an instrument of development but under the prevailing poverty scenario it will develop a creative policy to generate positive response which will not be antithetical to the interest of the resource poor, progress and efficiency and by which the small holders will progressively reach viable levels of efficiency and output with access to better quality credit and subsidy support.
The State will have two kinds of credit inflow for the livestock sector :

1. Commercial Credit for the upper end of the smallholder producers engaged in livestock enterprises to enable them to move into intermediate production system.

2. A concessional and liberalised credit scheme for the bottom half of the small holder spectrum, in the IRDP format, to enable them to move above the poverty line and to achieve the efficiency levels for entering into intermediate systems.

3.6 Ensure the ecological and environmental sustainability of livestock sector growth and modernization; mitigating their adverse impact through appropriate policies and programmes.

The very large and growing population of bovine is a major threat to sustainability of all animals and agriculture in Orissa. Reduction in cattle numbers is possible only if the dependence on draught animals for farm power declines. The new livestock policy will encourage a set of measures to reduce the dependence on draught animals for farm power and to reduce their numbers: 

1. Optimal sharing of work animals by farmers;

2. Improved quality of work animals through grading up of local animals with Haryana breed;

3. Vigorously encouraging lease markets for work animals, promoting team labour and 

4. Encouraging establishment of agro-service centres in major villages, enabling custom hiring of farm machinery and tractors.

Another major ecological concern is the deterioration of common property resources. The problem of designing the interface between livestock owners and common property resources is complex and intractable. For the new livestock policy it makes best sense to encourage and support a variety of experiments and approaches to: 

1. Generate alternatives that reduce pressure on rural people to pursue livelihood strategies detrimental to their habitat and

2. Promote symbiotic and synergetic relationships between local communities and their environment, through participatory natural resource management.

3.7 Restructure and revitalize existing institutional set up in the livestock sector, enhance institution level efficiency and promote new institutional models to handle the emerging challenges in sector development.

Under the regime of the new policy, two major initiatives are proposed: 

1. Existing institutional structure will be reoriented and geared up to play a far bigger and demanding role, partly through restructuring and partly by redefining its mission; and

2. There are many tasks that need to be performed, for which the best strategy would be to promote institutions outside the Government.

The mandate of the Department of Fisheries and Animal Resources Development under the new policy would be:

1. Control, containment and eradication of animal diseases; and

2. Livestock sector development. Department will progressively move away from delivery of veterinary care and AI services, first converting them into mobile practices; gradually retreating towards the privatization of the services. The Department will have a bipolar structure, reflecting the mandate - one group engaged in disease control and the other in livestock development. Disease control will be the direct action by the Department; but for livestock development the Department will work in a participatory format. The Department’s training capacity will be geared up to cater to the needs of intensified participatory extension service and empowerment of Non-Governmental Organisations active in livestock development.

The development tasks under the new policy will necessitate the promotion of a new autonomous body “the Orissa Livestock Resource Development Society” (OLRDS), a registered society under the Societies Act, which will take over all the AI infrastructure, except the field AI centers. It will generate all the genetic inputs for breeding of cattle and buffalo and will establish a state-wide infrastructure for the distributed bulk movement and bulk storage of liquid nitrogen. Frozen semen and liquid nitrogen will be delivered to all AI practitioners at their doorstep by the OLRDS, against payment.

The Orissa State Cooperative Milk Producers Federation (OMFED) and the milk unions affiliated to it will be re-promoted with greater autonomy, greater member control and reduced Government interventions in order to enable it to pursue its charter and business interest as a commercial enterprise of producer members.

The Utkal Gomangal Samiti (UGS) will take up larger responsibilities in promoting natural breeding service and use of crossbred bullocks.
The Orissa State Poultry Products Co-operative Marketing Federation (OPOLFED) will be re-promoted as a development co-operative to take up the responsibility of supplying the genetic inputs and appropriate technologies for the backyard poultry system in addition to assisting small producers to market their products.

The Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) through its constituent colleges will provide necessary technical input and guidance in matters relating to overall livestock sectoral growth.

Agricultural Promotion and Investment Corporation of Orissa Ltd. (APICOL) will promote dairy and poultry industries on commercial scale through entrepreneurship development programme. A food processing unit will be within the ambit of its objective.
District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) / Zilla Parishad will disseminate developmental work under Animal Husbandry sector at grass root level under Panchayat Raj System.

Breeders Associations, Voluntary Agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations will be promoted to activate the grass root level bodies and for imparting training and transfer of skills as may be defined by the State Government.