Organic dairy farming in Uttarakhand: an analysis of prospect from farmers' perspective

Uttarakhand, one of the leading states in Organic farming in India, have a predominance of mostly traditional integrated crop livestock farming closed to organic system along with relatively unpolluted ecosystem. The state also has a vast number of certified organic crop farmers supported by well developed organizational structure for promoting organic farming as well as marketing of organic crop products. The present study analyzed the prospect of adopting certified organic dairy farming by these organic farmers in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Analytical hierarchy process was utilized to quantify the factors, based on prevailing field level situation, under the above four dimensions. It was found that "huge natural resource base to ensure feed and water availability" was the most important strength factor (with a global priority score of 0.084); whereas "low productivity of indigenous breeds and production loss" with global priority of 0.091, "easy convertibility of traditional and integrated crop livestock based farming system to organic system" (global priority score 0.113) and " lack of organized certification system and certification standards for organic dairy" (global priority score 0.071) turned out to be the most important weakness, opportunity and threat factors respectively.