Union Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh Saturday said the Centre would extend all required assistance to make Tripura atmanirbhar (self-dependent) in milk and fish production.
Speaking at the inauguration of a milk processing plant at Bamutia in West Tripura district, Singh said milk production is increasing by 6 per cent in India every year against the world average of a 2 per cent hike.
“Tripura has huge scope in the animal husbandry and fisheries sector,” the minister further said.
Sharing a success story of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), the Union minister stated that the capacity of milk collection at an old milk collection centre in Varanasi increased to 3 lakh litres per day from 11,000 litres per day after it was taken over by NDDB.
He, thereafter, asked the Tripura government to take strong initiatives to eradicate foot and mouth disease among cattle, stating that any outbreak of the disease makes it difficult to export dairy products to European countries.
The newly launched milk processing unit in Tripura can handle 40,000 litres of milk every day, of which 10,000 litres would be turned into curd and buttermilk.
Tripura set a 10-year target for food self-sufficiency in 2002-03.
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The target was not achieved at the time of evaluation in 2012-13, with barely 25,000 MT of meat, 12.5 crore eggs and 1.05 MT of milk produced annually. Later, the erstwhile Left Front government set a new target for self-sufficiency in food production by 2020. But despite repeated attempts, it failed to cut down on its import dependency.
In 2020, then chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb said his government was trying to double the income of farmers, including those in the dairy and poultry sectors.
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