Revnar Foods, Milan Sharma Recipient of Dr. V. Kurien Innovative Dairy Farmers award 2021
I would start with sharing with you all some facts about myself. I completed my Masters in Biochemistry in 1991, with dreams of getting a good guide and getting into some major research work. My parents wasted no time in finding a guide for me and landing me into the biggest research area of my life – Marriage. Being the eldest daughter in law of the family, which hails from Mathura my entire research was limited to the house. Within 5 years I also got experienced in the field of motherhood. At this time I got a chance to start learning a foreign language- German. As my 2 children got into the school I also started my journey of working to earn some money. Till now work and research was on but without any salary. Now I officially started getting paid for my time and efforts. As time went by I kept widening my horizon. The job certainly made me an experienced teacher, along with it I also took all responsibilities that were thrown my way and gathered a lot of knowledge about accounting, administration, record keeping. The most important area though I found was understanding human psychology. The years at the school helped me not only sharpen my understanding of child psychology but also adult psychology, due to the interactions with my colleagues and majorly with the parents who came from all walks of life.
As luck would have it , I was offered the post of project manager for a new Project of the German Govt. in our country, in the same year as my younger child passed out from school. Here came an opportunity of learning some more. By 2018 my elder child had finished his Masters in Mechanical Engg and secured a job in Holland and the younger one had finished his MBBS at AFMC and got commissioned in the Indian Army. Incidentally that very year my husband thought of purchasing 2 cows of indigenous breed in the memory of his late father. In due course of time from 2 they became 10 and then 30. That is when I decided that we need to take better care of them and I quit my cushy well paying job and set out to learn some more. Initially I attended a couple of short term courses at NDRI, Karnal and have continued the learning by attending all possible seminars and webinars in the field of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Today I have a family of 25 employees and 8 children living on the farm, more working on delivery routes , 55 adult cows and 125 calves.
In these three years I have learnt the importance of breeding the local breeds. In my belief it is a myth that the milk of certain breed is the best. We all know that the milk of all the Indian breeds contains the A 2 allele of protein. Not only milk of indian cows, but also of Murrah buffaloes, Indian goat, sheep and camel has this allele.
So I believe and have experienced that it is best to keep cows or other animals which are natives of that area. They are genetically tuned for the crops and trees that grow in that area and survive better in the local weather conditions.
I have mainly Sahiwals. There are a couple of Rathis and some Tharparkar and Haryani cows.
With so many desi cows with me I am also cultivating fodder and growing grains, oil seeds and dals in about 30 acres of land.
My initial learning in this field was at NDRI, Karnal, but gradually I started gathering knowledge from various other sources. I would make notes of the day to day events at the farm and then try to resolve whatever problems I faced by contacting Professors at Veterinary Colleges and Agriculture Institutes, Professors at Fodder Research Institutes and by getting in touch with Officials from the Animal Husbandry department, from the Krishi Vigyan Kendras and reading from all possible journals and material available on the websites of these reputed institutes. The social media, especially youtube is full of all sorts of informative videos. But I restricted myself to the videos posted by NDDB and they have proven to be of great help to me. Even today I keep checking their videos regularly. I never give a miss to any Webinar conducted by the institutes.
Since I have been associated with education in my previous work , people soon realized that I am good at imparting knowledge. And now I am invited by KVKs and Institutes to address farmers on Dairy farming best practices. The audience is 99.9% males and they are a little uncomfortable in the beginning. But we have had 100% success rate as the impact of an urban woman talking to them in their language at their level is long lasting. The same things which have been told to them by scientists and officials n number of times suddenly start making sense to them.
Achievements and Aim:
- In appx. 3 years my family has grown from 4 cows to appx. 180 heads.
- From 10 litres a day we are now 200 litres a day.
- From knowing nothing about cattle breeding, we have now a complete database of Insemination – Date, AI success rate, Sire details, no. of straws used, Semen success rate, lactation period etc.
- From 0 knowledge of desi breeds to having calves of excellent lineage.
- From complete reliance on Allopathic drugs administered, unfortunately sometimes by quacks also, to 95% dependance on treatment by Herbs and trees grown at the farm.(this has reduced our expense on medicines considerably)
- From “please take our free sample of milk” to a sold out position with milk selling at 110 Rs/l .
- From not knowing what to do with the cowdung to setting up a Gobar gas plant(capacity 85 cubic metre), selling gobar gas plant slurry, selling manure, selling Dhoop Battis, diyas, flower pots and bricks made of cowdung.
- From having one care taker on the payrolls to be able to provide jobs to appx. 25 people at the farm, 10 out on the delivery routes and contributing my small bit to agricultural economic turnover of the country.
- From being an alien to the village to be able to integrate myself with the local families, provide them jobs, provide their children support and guidance with education and plan for the upliftment of the village by approaching authorities to get community level Gobar gas plant setup for providing piped gas in the village. Gradually we are also going to get some industry oriented setups in the village – like a silage plant.
- From no background about conventional dairying and farming to be applying a lot of non conventional modern methods which aid in conservation of water, reducing consumption of electricity and also less use of seed per hectare. (use of sprinklers, drip irrigation, reviving tubewells with canal water in areas of saline water table, ridge farming, mixed cropping, gobar gas plant, 8 kw solar power)
- 11. Integrating Agriculture with Dairy farming has led to 0 expense on fertilisers, weedicides, pesticides etc. as we make everything inhouse with the gobar, gaumutra and plant leaves and residue of our farm.
- From just milk as our product to be ale to provide a list of chemical free products to our customers – Milk, Curd, Butter, Chaach, Masala Chaach, Pudina Chaach, Paneer, Masala Paneer, Low fat Paneer, Khoa, Ghee, Khoa barfi, Wheat, Jau, Bajra, Chana and Jowar Ata, Arhar and Moong Dal, Mustard oil,Dhoop Batti, Uple, Diya, Hawan sticks , Manure, Slurry, Gaumutra based pesticides and Gobar bricks to mention some.
My aim is to popularize dairy and agriculture as a noble and profit making venture amongst the educated youth of our country. I want villages to get back to chemical free farming and at the same time become totally self reliant on green energy sources like Gobar gas for cooking as well as for electricity.
I am grateful to all govt. organisations and my family and friends who have been a great support and motivators in my journey .
Milan Sharma ,Revnar Foods ,Pavta village ,Faridabad Sohna Road ,Faridabad
milancs@gmail.com
http://www.apnikheti.com/progressivefarmers/tag/dairy-farming/
https://www.pashudhanpraharee.com/dr-v-kurien-innovative-dairy-farmers-award-2021/
