Ind. Jn. ofAgri. Econ. Vol.57, No.4, Oct-Dec. 2002 Dairying in Malabar: A Venture of the Landowning based on Women's Work? D. Narayana* INTRODUCTION India occupies the second place in the production of milk in the world. The strategy adopted to achieve such remarkable growth in milk production has been a replication of the `Anand pattern' of co-operative dairying in other parts of India using the proceeds of European Economic Commission (EEC) dairy surpluses donated to India under the Operation Flood (OF) programme. The Indian dairy co- operative strategy has, however, proved to be fiercely controversial. One of the major criticisms of the strategy has been that too much focus on transforming the production and marketing technology along western lines has led to a situation where the policy 'took care of the dairy animal but not the human beings who own the animal'. Some dairy unions have come forward to set up foundations and trusts to address the development problems of milk producers. The well-known ones are, The Thribhuvandas Foundation' at Anand, Visaka Medical, Educational and Welfare Trust, and Varana Co-operative Society. They mainly focus on health and educational needs of milk producers and employees. These pioneering efforts have inspired other milk unions. The Malabar Regional Co-operative Milk Producers' Union (MRCMPU)2 has recently registered a welfare trust named, Malabar Rural Development Foundation (MRDF). The mission objective of MRDF is to make a sustainable improvement in the quality of life of dairy farmers by undertaking specific interventions. The planning of interventions for the welfare of dairy farmers in the Malabar region by MRDF called for an understanding of them in the larger social context. Do dairy farmers who are members of milk societies belong to the lower income classes? Are they largely poor and landless? If not, then justifying such interventions may be problematic from an equity point of view. Equity demands that the poorer population outside the milk societies also be considered for some of these welfare programmes. Scholarly studies have noted that dairy co-operatives in India have failed to reach the poorer sections of rural society. A recent study of two dairy co-operatives in Gujarat argued that inequality in the ownership of land and widespread illiteracy among scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC and ST) prevent them from * Centre for Development Studies, Prasanthnagar, Ulloor, Thiruvananthapuram-695 011 (Kerala). DAIRYING IN MALABAR: A VENTURE OF THE LANDOWNING BASED ON WOMEN'S WORK? 699 participating in co-operatives (Rawal, undated). In the Kerala context, an earlier study had shown that cattle ownership and dairying is largely confined to the landed: "10% of the households with more than 250 cents of land accounted for 26% of the total cattle population. The distribution of households and cattle population indicated that 56% of households in the first two categories of land size holdings (owning less than 50 cents) accounted for only 28% of the cattle"(George and Nair, 1990, p. 43). Further, the burden of dairying falls heavily on women: "In milking, both males and females participated more or less equally. However, in feeding female participation was much more dominant than male participation. All operations pooled together, about 60 percent of the labour used in cattle keeping was supplied by females"(George and Nair, 1990). Given these findings it should be of interest to investigate whether the Malabar dairy farmers also show the same pattern. In particular, three questions should be of interest: (i) Whether SC/ST have not taken to dairying and are excluded from the membership of milk societies; (ii) Whether the landless and those owning smaller extent of land are not able to take up dairying; and (iii) Whether the burden of dairying activities falls heavily on women in the cattle keeping households. The methodology adopted was one of collecting data through a survey of milk society farmers and non-milk society farmers. The sample households were drawn from two milk societies each in the three districts of Palakkad, Kozhikode and Wayanad in Malabar, north Kerala. The sample households as well as the sample societies were drawn at random from the list available at MRCMPU. There is considerable variation across the six districts of Malabar in terms of population density, composition of population, urbanisation and cropping pattern. The selection of the three districts seeks to capture some of that diversity (Table 1). TABLE L CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THREE DISTRICTS STUDIED Item Wayanad Kozhikode Palalckad (1) (2) (3) (4) Population density 1991 (persons/sq. lcm) 315 1,118 532 SC/ST share in population (per cent) 21 7 15 Muslim (per cent) 26 36 25 Christian (per cent) 24 5 4 Average holding size (ha) 0.68 0.26 0.42 Dominant crop Pepper Coconut Paddy Urbanisation (per cent) 3.41 38.34 15.75 Source: Kerala Statistical Institute (2000). A questionnaire was canvassed on a sample of 50 milk society farmer households (chosen at random from the list of total farmers associated with milk society for the last three years),3 and 50 non-milk society farmer households (adjacent to the member households). The survey was carried out during January 17 to February 23, 2001. The survey is not designed for arriving at estimates of any of the variables. The 700 INDIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS data are used to discern patterns in livelihood and resource profile, socio-economic and work status of milk society farmers (MS farmers) and non-milk society farmers (NMS farmers) in the three districts. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section II presents a brief overview of dairy development in Kerala. The section seeks to provide a broad background to the study. Section III discusses the caste, education and economic status of the households. The thrust of this section is on 'placing' the milk society farmers (MS farmers henceforth) on the canvas of the general population. Section IV discusses the crop pattern and cattle ownership by size-class of land holdings. Section V provides an account of the work status of the MS farmers in comparison with the NMS farmers. Section VI analyses dairying and women's work in the sample households in some detail. The last section presents the conclusion. II DAIRY DEVELOPMENT IN KERALA In the post-Independence India systematic and intensive efforts have been made in animal husbandry development. In Kerala organised attempts to develop the animal husbandry sector began with the Key Village Scheme (KVS) in the 1950s. The scheme continued to operate in the subsequent periods, but a large number of these key village centres were merged with the Intensive Cattle Development Programme (ICDP) later on. Besides these schemes, the Indo-Swiss Project and the Department of Dairy Development took up major breed improvement programmes in the state. The state has witnessed a rapid growth in milk production in the last two decades. The annual average growth in milk production during the last two decades in the state was 9.3 per cent compared to the national average of 4.7 per cent (Government of Kerala, 1999 b). Such growth in milk production has taken place when the bovine population itself has shown a declining trend indicating that the contribution of the 'breed effect' and 'yield effect' to growth in milk output is strong. Along with the breed improvement programmes, attempts were made to provide facilities for procurement of milk from the rural areas and its processing and distribution in the urban centres. The number of primary co-operative societies which was only 195 in 1963-64 increased to 1,582 by 1986-87 and currently stands at over 2,200. Co-operative dairying in the state received a big push in the 1980s with the launching of the OF programme. Under this programme, the Kerala Co-operative Mill Marketing Federation was established during the year 1980. It forms a ,three-tier co-operative organisation with the milk producers' societies at the villge level, regional producers union in the middle and the Federation at the apex. The milk processing capacity has also steadily increased. By 1987 the co-operative federation had built up eight dairies with a capacity of about three lakh litres (per day) of milk. The number of dairies has increased to nine and the processing capacity close to seven lakh litres by 1999. During this period the procurement of milk by the societies increased from about two lakh litres to over five lakh litres. DAIRYING IN MALABAR: A VENTURE OF THE LANDOWNING BASED ON WOMEN'S WORK? 701 Milk procurement by the societies has shown an increase in the state. Between 1989 and 1999 procurement of milk has grown at a compound growth rate of 8.49 per cent per year. The regional pattern, however, is different. The contribution of Malabar to this growth has been close to 60 per cent. Consequently, the share of Malabar in total procurement has increased from about 15 per cent in 1989 to about 40 per cent by 1999. Breed improvement has played an important role in this remarkable growth of milk production and procurement. The percentage of crossbred cattle in the total increased by about 30 percentage points in the Malabar districts, except Kozhikode and Kasaragod (Government of Kerala, 2000 a), and now (at around 70 per cent) they look comparable to the levels in the southern districts, where the increase in the percentage of crossbred cattle in the total has been about 15 percentage points. Obviously, the contribution of 'breed effect' to growth in milk production in the south is becoming smaller. Malabar has witnessed rapid growth in milk production during the last decade compared to south Kerala.