Revitalizing fodder production: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

India supports approximately 20% of the global livestock population and 17.5% of the human population, all within a mere 2.3% of the world's land area. While the human population is increasing by 1.6% annually, the livestock population is growing at a rate of 0.66% per year. These escalating numbers are vying for limited land resources with respect to food and fodder production. Consequently, only 4% of the total cultivable land in the country is utilized for cultivated fodders. Currently, there is a significant deficit in green fodder (35.6%), dry crop leftovers (10.5%), and concentrate feed ingredients (44%). Expanding the land area for fodder cultivation ahead of food and commercial crop cultivation is a challenging task. Therefore, the absolute challenge is to utilize the limited available land judiciously to its maximum potential for fodder production, considering the increasing demand from both human and animal populations. This can be achieved by adopting appropriate cropping systems, integrating fodder crops into food and other cash crop-based rotations, cultivating fodder on degraded lands through agroforestry systems, and exploring alternative green fodder options. Cropping systems incorporating forage crops offer a promising solution to address the fodder scarcity by utilizing resources more efficiently.