"Improving local livestock breeds may take 30 years’

An interview with livestock expert Dr Nazeer Hussain Kalhoro

Dr. Kalhoro is currently working as Director General Sindh Institute of Animal Health in Sindh’s Livestock Department where he is also Provincial Program Coordinator for reduction of stunting and malnutrition in Sindh’s livestock sector. He holds Masters in Veterinary Pathology from Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam, followed by a PhD in Virology and Vaccine development from University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany. He also holds an MBA from Dadabhoy Institute of Higher Education. During the course of his career, he has worked with the World Bank as well as the ACIAR Australia and UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

In this interview with BR Research he sheds light on livestock in Pakistan, its population trends and quality of its gene, import policy for exotic livestock breed, and dairy business model for cities like Karachi.

BR Research: Is it true that livestock population is falling in Pakistan?

Nazeer Kalhoro: The last livestock census conducted in 2006 in Pakistan. Since then, we have been using inter-census growth rate between 2006 census and the one before that in 1998 to estimate current livestock population.

In recent years, Punjab’s livestock department did their own livestock census and their numbers have challenged the federal government livestock estimates used for livestock GDP. Across Punjab, the 2016 provincial livestock census reveals that actual number of total livestock in the province was about 25 percent lower than the provincial number for 2016 estimated by federal government for that year. In some Punjab districts, it was 30 percent lower; in others it was 40 percent lower. These results are very alarming.

Based on our experience and observation, the story is almost the same in Sindh, although, we have not done livestock census in Sindh. In 2006, Sindh had 32.5 million livestock and to my understanding, that number hasn’t changed in the last 12 years. We still have 33-34 million, even though official estimates put that number at 39 million. Despite contrarian estimates, however, as a government, we cannot officially use any other data unless a new livestock census is conducted.

BRR: What are the reasons behind poor growth or decline in livestock?

NK: While urbanisation has supported the growth of some corporate dairy and commercial farms near peri-urban areas, on the whole it has hit the rural livestock industry. Rural livestock is after all bigger portion of the pie; corporate dairy farms are only few in number.

One of the key factors behind this weak growth trend is lack of credit from the banking sector. Only 7 percent of total agricultural loan is given to the livestock sector, whereas livestock is more than 50 percent of the country’s total agricultural GDP. This is because banks want collateral when they give a loan.

How can livestock owners give collateral when 89 percent of the livestock belongs to landless livestock farmers? Those livestock farmers who have land are only 11 percent, and when they take loan, they invariably spend that loan on their land instead of livestock. The livestock is the only commodity, which is cashable income, but they don’t get credit from the banking sector.

The third reason for weak growth is poor public investment in the sector due to poor government spending – in terms of government spending of developmental projects. Prior to devolution, the federal government used to spend about Rs23 billion as a part of their federal annual developmental spending on agriculture including livestock through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Minfal), of which Sindh used to get initiatives and incentives in the livestock sector worth Rs4 billion.

After the devolution in 2010, the responsibility of livestock was passed from federal government to provincial governments, which means Minfal’s development allocation to livestock existed no more. On the flipside, provincial development spending on livestock after devolution remained poor for a few years. Only recently, has it started to pick up but that also is not enough or in line with the approved Sindh Livestock Policy.

The fourth reason is weak private investment in the sector. There was a corporate sector boom between 2007 to perhaps 2012, but it has tapered off since. After Engro and Nestle, there hasn’t been any other major driver of corporate sector dairy farms. Another reason behind poor livestock growth is the flawed operational model of dairy parlours in urban centres.

BRR: Tell us about the problems in operational model of dairy parlours in urban centres

NK: These problems are limited to Karachi and some key urban parts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but it warrants a closer understanding since these urban markets have a significant impact on livestock population.

Pakistani indigenous breeds have a life of about 10 years during which they give us at least 7 crops or calves. In contrast, imported or cross between local and imported semen gives us 3-4 calves. But when owners of milking parlours bring local pregnant animals from rural areas to milking parlours in urban or peri-urban areas, they kill the offspring as soon as it reaches the slaughtering age, sometimes even earlier, which is illegal. This is because the calf whether male or female has a cost; it drinks the milk of its mother cow, which the owners of milking parlours would rather sell.

Later, by the end of the milking period of the cow, these milking parlours sell those cows to the slaughtering houses instead of sending them back to the rural areas where they could graze, become healthy and pregnant again and come back to the urban areas for milking. This means that the animals brought to these milking parlours don’t complete their crop cycle of seven calves. Although, some dairy farm owners in peri-urban areas have now understood that it is more beneficial to keep the animal, grow its offspring and re-breed them, but this is limited to few large farmers and is not making a significant effect on the sector in the absence of public sector support.

In other words, the herd size that would have grown at a multiple of 7 and would give milk 7 times, is not growing at that multiple for the last 18 years. About 90 percent of the cows in Karachi that come to urban farms for milking, their offspring are killed even if it is a heifer. And in 7-8 months, they kill the milking cow as well instead rebreeding it.

For centuries, our livestock was naturally growing 3.5 percent per year net-off culling, and disease and etc. Today, 30-40 percent of rural livestock that is going to urban areas gets slaughtered because we kill those 6 cycles. Then how can the livestock grow?

BRR: What can be done to reverse this trend?

NK: One way is to give subsidy to milk parlour owners so they can send the animal back to the rural areas once it is milked. Until 1990s, the government used to give a subsidy equaling about 80 percent of the railway cargo fees.

Secondly, as a society, we have to rethink about the whole model of dairy business. These milking farmers in urban or peri urban areas do not even know the farming business because most of these people have lived all their lives in the city; they don’t know the cattle breeding business. Those in the rural areas know the production cycles, and they manage their animals such that there are some animals that continue to milk while others are given a rest period. I personally think that our farming centre should be in the rural areas.

In addition to this, financial institutes have to come forward not only for lending to livestock sector whereas insurance companies need focus on livestock insurance and ensured that they can cover major risks factor and drastically increase livestock sector growth.

BRR: Why should dairy farming be in rural areas?

NK: Because our demand is in the urban areas, we have moved the farms to urban and peri-urban areas. But it needs to be understood that the raw material for these farms comes from rural, which increases the cost of production of milk.

About 70 percent of the cost of milk is the fodder or the feed. Instead of fetching milk from rural to urban as a finished product, you have it the other way around. It is cheaper to transport milk from rural or urban instead of transporting animals and their feed from rural to urban.

For example, the cost of feed at the production level is Rs10 per kilogram, when it arrives in Karachi, its cost becomes Rs12 to Rs13 per kg, Rs2 to Rs3 per kg being the cost of transport, freight, toll, loading unloading etc included. On average, a cow eats 8 kg of fodder to produce 1 litre of milk, which means the freight cost of fodder to produce 1 litre of milk is at least about Rs16 (2 times 8). In contrast, cost of transportation of milk under cold storage is about Rs1.5 to Rs2 rupees per litre. Plus, labour, water and land are also cheaper in rural areas.

BRR: There has been some talk about minimum pasteurisation law in Punjab, and dairy association told us they are in talks with Sindh as well to roll out a similar law in Sindh. How can it be effectively implemented?

NK: The whole livestock policy framework in the country is confused. All registrations of drugs and vaccines and other import and export are allowed or disallowed at federal level; they don’t even take input from the provinces.

Likewise, the 1960 federal government law says that milk sold in the country ought to be pasteurised. But even if new laws are made as is in Punjab, who is going to implement the pasteurised milk law? The livestock department cannot; it’s not its domain. It is effectively local government’s domain or municipal law; but there is no clarity on that front. Moreover, there is no regulating agency to regulate the UHT processors.

BRR: Why has the quality of our local livestock breeds gone down?

NK: Let me first assure you that latest molecular technologies have proven that just as the origin of humans is from Palestine, the origin of cow in the world is from Thar and Cholistan. It is from here, cows migrated or were taken to all over the world including Europe, US; and I am speaking in historical terms i.e. more than 10-12 thousand years ago. Those who belittle our local cow breeds, don’t know the history of cow. The only difference is whereas other countries have systematically worked on cow breeds and we have not.

Even until 15 to 20 years ago, our buffaloes would yield 16 litres of milk on average. Today it only yields 6 litres, or 8 litres after injecting hormones. This is because the gene pool has gone down as we are killing the breeds prematurely, and secondly because of in-breeding which causes recessive gene to become dominant and causes diseases and low milk yield.

Earlier we used to keep proven bulls at livestock departments, and farmers would bring their cows to the vet office or livestock departments for breeding purpose, and the records used to be kept. But we stopped this practice many decades ago and farmers have started breeding their livestock on their own.

BRR: How can we improve local breeds, and what’s the quickest way to do it?

NK: Because we have destroyed our breed, good animals are not available in large quantities, anyone going into this business will have to rely only on 20 percent good quality breeding stock, and the rest will be mediocre animals. In Brazil, they had fast tracked the process by using embryos of our own Red Sindhi cattle, because they have high resistance and don’t have tick fever.

Punjab and Sindh have allowed breeding societies where they have also allowed breeding of exotic breeds. In Sindh, a breeding authority has been formed and we are in the process of scaling it up. We have already set up a state of art labs to test semen that will be registering imported and local semen providers against a pre-defined quality standard and testing them periodically. But these all steps will take a lot of time – may be a minimum of 30 years – before Pakistan’s low productive livestock converts into a highly productive one.

The fastest way would be if the federal government reviews and relaxes its policy on import of livestock and their germplasm of both our own breeds and exotic breeds. This will include import of elite cows, goats, buffaloes, sheep and other food animals, their embryos, semen and their relevant technology which is currently not allowed.