Interview with, Dr Imran Basharat, Sahiwal Cattle Breeders Association
‘Need to develop local Sahiwal breed’
Dr Imran Basharat is the General Secretary of Sahiwal Cattle Breeders Association that works towards the improvement and development of local cow breeds. In this interview with BR Research, Imran sheds light on the potential of local Sahiwal breed cows, and whether or not a good dairy business model could be had based on local breeds as against Sahiwal breeds.
BR Research: Is this true that most of Pakistan’s livestock is owned by small farmers who own no more than 5-10 animals?
Imran Basharat: Yes, you can say that. Livestock is one of the biggest reservoirs of unemployment, unemployed landless farmers specifically. Many landless farmers have been keeping animals in their house. However, lately some of them have begun renting small piece land; say 1 canal of land for 1-2 years, and contract to grow fodder for their cattle. But their herd size is not more than 1-5 animals.
Then there are small scale farmers who have about 5 acres to 12 acres of land. These farmers are under much higher stress because while their scale is bigger than the farmers who have 1-5 animals, their cost of feed and animal maintenance is higher than the price they get for milk. These farmers have about 8-20 animals and sell about 20 to 50 litres of milk (depending on the farm size) in total to the middleman after their own household milk consumption and the feeding of young calves. Then there are bigger farmers, but their combined herd size in relation to the total livestock population is less than 1 percent.
BRR: What do landless farmers feed their animals? And is poor feeding a bigger problem than poor quality of our breeds.
IB: They don’t give any special feed; they simply give ‘chaara’ (foliage), which is why our animals are feed deficient. Neither are these farmers educated enough to know the feed requirements, nor do they have the budget. In the subsistence farming model, it is the household women who feed and wash the animals and care for them, which has no financial cost for the farmer. But when you scale up the business then farmer will have to hire labour, which comes at a cost.
Here I would like to point out that it’s a misconception that Pakistani breeds cannot yield enough milk. When we have properly fed our Sahiwal breeds, they have given even up to 20 litres of milk at cattle exhibitions. This shows that the potential exists in local breeds. But it is just that farmers don’t give animal the necessary rest after delivery of offspring, nor do they give their cows the necessary feed right after they give birth.
Poor feeding also results in animals’ udders getting dry much earlier than usual; and it also negatively affects their calving frequency, meaning they give birth to fewer calves in their lifetime because of poor feeding. In addition to these, the residue of pesticides on animal fodder is making our animals sick, which also hurts milk yield and calving.
BRR: Can you walk us through the milk collection process and milk quality?
IB: The milk collection and marketing system in Pakistan is very poor. With the exception of few big dairy parlours in the country, such as Karachi’s ‘bhains (cattle) colony’ which have their own supply chain cycle, the middleman in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa collects milk from small farmers from their doorstep at about Rs50-Rs60 depending upon region to region.
This middleman collects milk on his motorbike, with two drums of 40 litres capacity each on the sides of his bike. In winters, he collects about 100 litres; in the summers he collects 70 litres per day. Those drums are not built for this purpose, nor are these drums kept clean. In order to save the quality of milk, the middleman adds a host of other things such as hydrogen peroxide, soda bicarbonate, caustic soda, formalin, to reduce risks of milk going bad. Then he adds up to 40 percent cow milk in 100 litres of buffalo milk that he has purchased. He does this because cow milk is cheaper, which he gets for Rs40 per litre as against buffalo milk which he gets for Rs50-Rs60 per litre. This lowers his average cost of purchase. This is the story of loose milk sold in retail shops in posh neighbourhoods of major cities, which is revered as top-quality milk.
BRR: What’s the story of poorer quality of milk?
IB: The quality in the loose milk industry only goes bad from what I just described. For instance, there are those who add water, or whey powder and what not, which also hurts nutritional quality of milk. Bad quality of milk is one of the reasons why Pakistani children are weak and under-nourished.
Neither the government, nor the consumers of loose milk realise that they are effectively paying the same price had prices not been controlled, because effectively they are getting only half litre of good milk mixed with various adulterations for the price of one litre milk.
BRR: Do you see any scope for beef industry in the short to medium run?
IB: There is no scope of beef in our economy. Dairy is the driver of livestock industry. But the biggest hurdle in the growth of this industry is that milk producers are not getting the right price.
BRR: Tell us about your breeding society.
IB: As the name suggests, we only work on Sahiwal breed of cows. There are now 600,000 Sahiwal in the country. But unfortunately, there is too much mindless crossing of cattle breeds in this country, without any breeding plan. Nor are there any authentic certifiable progeny records available.
Our programme was a 10-year project from 2004 to 2014, where we did a few activities. This project was conceived because Pakistan’s Sahiwal breed was dying due of mindless crossing. We came to know about this thanks to a 1998 study by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) that had warned that Sahiwal cattle was going extinct in Pakistan with its total number falling below the key threshold of 10,000 animals. Hence, we started breeding using good quality Sahiwal breeds.
At Sahiwal Breeders Association, we used the best yielding Sahiwal cows, about 2000 Sahiwal cows from government sector and 8000 cows from private sector, and we had them inseminated with top quality Sahiwal bulls whose semen had been proven at various government levels. Back then there were only three farms that had the pure Sahiwal blood; Bhawalnagar farm in Okara, Jehangirabad farm in Khanewal, and another farm near Kaloorkot.
BRR: What has happened to the project since then?
IB: When the 3rd or 4th generation offspring of those goods Sahiwal breeds came to life at our farms, we gave it to the private sector. But they started cross breeding local Sahiwal, on which we had worked so hard on, with imported semen. That’s when we realised that the private sector does not appreciate the importance of maintaining and developing a proper breed.
Therefore, in 2009 Punjab government livestock department set up a Red Gold Club at National Research Centre for Conservation of Sahiwal cattle. Under the Red Gold Club, we said that any Sahiwal that has 18 litres yield per day, we will register that animal with us and give the farmer Rs20,000 per animal as an incentive to the animal registered with us, against a promise that the farmer will not get that animal inseminated with the imported semen. Our total budget was Rs 600,000 per annum and every year we would only register 20-22 of those good Sahiwals.
In the first year, we registered 20 Sahiwals yielding 18-29 litres of milk. Later we created three categories: Silver Dairy Champion that yielded 18-22 litres per day; 22-26 Golden; and 26 plus declared as Platinum Dairy Champion. Accordingly, the incentive was increased to Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000 for Golden and Platinum categories. We didn’t simply take farmers word for it. Our committee (comprising of breeders and livestock department members) did spot checks on the farmer and took proper video recordings as evidence for milk yields.
BRR: Why did dairy farmers in private sector cross breed with imported bovine semen?
IB: The F1 generation or the first generation of crossing always produces high milk yield, which is why farmers would cross their original Sahiwal breeds with imported semen to get high yielding F1 generation. But when F1 generation is crossed with imported bovine semen again, the yield would drop substantially, and that’s something that most private sector dairy farmers don’t understand either because of their poor education or because of their short-term quick gain commercial mindset.
BRR: Lately we see a trend toward imported cows that supply milk to a lot of UHT processors and local pasteurised brands. Do you think local Sahiwal breeds could be used instead?
IB: A through breed of local Sahiwal cow costs about Rs200,000 whereas an imported animal costs Rs400,000 plus. The imported animals are only a short cut; plus they are expensive to maintain, whereas local breeds are not too expensive to maintain. Therefore, I don’t encourage imported breeds.
BRR: But if a company wants to set up a farm of local breeds starting with 500-1000 top Sahiwal cows, whose pedigree – let’s assume – can be verified or tested, then how soon can that company get those 500-1000 Sahiwals, if it can get it?
IB: I take your point. Buying a decent lot of good Sahiwal is difficult in a short span of time. But I can assure you that had our project continued after 2014, we would have been in a position to supply such big lots to anyone.
BRR: What if that project is kick-started again. How long would it take?
IB: It can, and it should be kick-started again. But it would be even more difficult since now there are hardly any good local breeds left. This is mostly because Punjab government’s project, under which it supplied locally produced bovine semen of good proven Sahiwal bulls to farmers for free, was shelved some years ago. Instead, they allowed the sale of exotic semen on which there was no duty initially, and in many areas, it was distributed free of cost. And like I said, because F1 generation yields high milk, farmers switched to cross breeds. This has effectively killed local breeds because all it takes 2-3 generation loss to kill the breed.
