The milk that ate the grass

The milk that ate the grass

SCENE I: 5 am in the morning, a household in any part of India. The milkman rings the doorbell. The sleepy-eyed customer takes the daily quota of the white fluid and prepares for the day ahead. There are more than 900 million people in the country. The demand for milk is stupendous. And the country just became the largest producer of milk in the world.

SCENE II: 5 pm in the evening, anywhere in the open country. Cows and buffaloes are returning from the pastures. Tired hooves fall on loose earth, raising an unmistakable haze, obscuring the unsatiated, scrawny animals. By grazing whatever little is left of the degraded pastures, they have just pushed India to the summit of global milk production. But how long before there is no fodder, grass or grasslands?

It is not just a question of cattle eating out of house and home. Misguided development efforts are also destroying India's grasslands. In Rajasthan, the Indira Gandhi canal has adversely affected the sewan grasslands, which have provided highly nutritious fodder for cattle in the Thar desert over the centuries.

Agriculture is also contributing to the destruction of grasslands, with the demand for cultivable land rising all the time. The scenario leaves us with a Hobson's choice: either India can increase milk production by letting cattle graze on whatever is left of its grasslands or it can grow more food crops. As the conflicting demands of people and cattle compete for land, the grasslands will continue to be razed. Across the country, village common lands that harboured grasslands earlier are being put to other uses. If these grasslands are lost, along with them will go the immense biological diversity they sustain. Plants and animals -- wild and domestic -- that have more uses than can be calculated and are crucial to the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.

The government is totally devoid of any policy on grazing or management and protection of the invaluable grasslands, and has as much of a role to play in their destruction as the cattle, if not more. The last time India's grasslands were surveyed was more than 30 years ago. "If one were to go back [to the areas that were surveyed earlier], the chances of finding rangelands (grasslands) are extremely remote," says B K Trivedi, scientist at the Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute (igfri) at Jhansi in Madhya Pradesh. If something substantial is not done at the administrative level -- and fast -- there may never be the need for another survey.

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Treasures in grass

Simply put, grasslands are for grazing. With India's economy dependent heavily on agriculture, and farmers, in turn, relying significantly on cattle rearing, grasslands are very crucial to the health of India's rural economy. About 90 per cent of the cattle population in the country subsists on natural grasslands or pastures.

Some of the grasses available in India have high nutritional value and are very hardy in the face of very testing ecological conditions. One such grass is sewan, found in western Rajasthan. It has adapted remarkably to the desert, has a very high protein content and the butter and milk from cattle fed on sewan is a distinctly darker shade of yellow and highly enriched (see box: The wonder grass).

But grasses also have biological and economic value, providing food and habitat to a great variety of organisms: insects, reptiles and amphibians. The bird lesser florican is purely a grassland species. The survival of animals such as the wild buffalo, hardground barasingha, blackbuck, wild ass and chinkara are also linked to the health of grasslands. Any threat to the grassland is a direct threat not only to the cattle but the dependent biodiversity.

In Rajasthan, sewan and other tall grass-like plants such as kheenp, which also has fodder value, are used to make roofs of huts. Similarly in the Banni grassland of Gujarat, some grasses are used for roofs of the huts called bungas. Grasslands are also a source of fuel and fodder for people living nearby, which puts an added pressure on them.

Leaner pastures
Over 80 per cent of India's rangelands that cater to the livestock are described as 'poor'. The health of any grazed rangeland depends on its carrying capacity, which is the amount of fodder that can be made available to animals after accounting for the amount needed by the rangeland to recover. The state of Kerala has the highest carrying capacity in the country. It is more than seven times that of Haryana, which has the lowest carrying capacity in India.

Most rangelands of India have a low carrying capacity, according to Panjab Singh of the Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya (igkvv), Jabalpur. "The natural balance in rangelands of India has been upset and 12 million hectares of permanent pastures have been converted into virtual wastelands with pathetic production," says Singh. The fact that little is being done to improve the availability of resources for cattle undermines the impressive milk production figures of India.

There are over 72,000 dairy cooperative societies in India with a membership of 9 million farmers in 170 milksheds (areas with intensive dairy operations). Though the country ranks first in milk production, supply of green fodder is short of the demand by 23 per cent, supply of dry fodder is short by 35 per cent, and the supply of feed concentrate additives, given to cattle to boost milk production, by 44 per cent.

No part of the country seems to have been spared from a shortfall of fodder. In the entire eastern Himalayan region of India, fodder availability is half the requirement. In the Kumaon and Garhwal regions of central Himalaya, only 37 per cent of the demand for fodder can be met.

This tremendous gap has led to a serious decline in livestock productivity, and serious questions need to be asked about the sustainability in local animal husbandry and pastoral practices,says Bhag Mal, coordinator, South Asia, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (ipgri), New Delhi.

A country-wide decline
Degradation of grasslands is a country-wide phenomenon. All states possessing rangelands are witnessing the results of a total absence of management efforts, alienation of the people who had stakes in the conservation of the grasslands, and, of course, overgrazing. An assessment of some important states follows:

ANDHRA PRADESH: Vast grasslands have been converted into agricultural fields in the semi-arid districts of Kurnool, Cuddapah, Anantpur and Rangareddy. It is difficult to find an undisturbed patch of about 10 sq km, says Asad Rahmani, director, Bombay Natural History Society (bnhs), Mumbai.

ASSAM: According to Rahmani, the Kaziranga National Park has some of the best of the remaining grasslands in India. But opinions differ. Assam has no significant rangeland left,says Anwaruddin Choudhury, executive director of the Rhino Foundation, Guwahati. As the principal investigator of a biodiversity conservation study of the World Wide Fund for Nature (wwf), he surveyed the north Cachar hills, Hamren and Barak valleys in the state. He found that rangelands covered less than 2 per cent of the total geographic area covered in the study. Rich elephant grass once existed in the flood plains of the main rivers in the Barak valley, southern Nagaon and Hamren. At least 50 species of animals and 150 species of birds can be found in the main rangelands. These include the Indian rhino, Asian elephant, wild water buffalo, swamp deer, Bengal florican and swamp partridge. "The loss in natural rangeland habitat will naturally result in loss of biodiversity," says Choudhury. The causes are not new: population explosion, agriculture and constant grazing. Villagers living on the fringes of the rangelands graze their cattle here. Rangelands continue to be encroached for agriculture.

BIHAR: Faced with intensive cultivation and grazing pressure, there are no grasslands left to protect in northern Bihar. The Valmiki Tiger Reserve is perhaps the only place where some terai grasslands can still be found.

GUJARAT: Some of the best grasslands in India can be seen in the Saurashtra and Kutch regions of the state. Scattered over eight districts, the size of these grasslands varies from 0.2 ha to 2000 ha. The Banni grasslands of Saurashtra are under tremendous pressure from grazing and change in land use patterns (see related story on p32: An army of mad trees).

MADHYA PRADESH: In forests, grasslands are either absent or present in the form of fragmented patches. The existence of animal species like wild buffalo, hardground barasingha, blackbuck and birds like the lesser florican in the region, however, implies that there have always been grasslands among the dense forests. The Sailana florican sanctuary in Ratlam and the grasslands nearby are under intense pressure from agriculture. More than half of the grasslands have disappeared during the past 10 years.

MAHARASHTRA: Vast grasslands used to be present in the Deccan region of Maharashtra, especially Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Sangli, Solapur, Beed, Osmanabad, Latur and parts of Buldana. Locally known as kurans, these are fast disappearing. The total land area under kurans came down by about 42 per cent from 1989-90 to 1991-92. The grasslands here are scattered and interspersed, and are difficult to protect. Of the 8,000 sq km area in the Jawaharlal Nehru Bustard Sanctuary, only 400 sq km is under the forest department. Less than half of this area in under grass cover, according to Rahmani. Not surprisingly the availability of forage is extremely limited: available grasslands can feed 3 million cattle; the actual cattle population is 34.5 million.

RAJASTHAN: In the districts of Jaisalmer, Barmer and Bikaner are found some of the finest grasslands, especially near the Indo-Pakistan border where the population is low. The Thar rangelands are depleting with time; optimum cover is now confined only to some inaccessible areas (see box: The wonder grass).

THE HIMALAYAN STATES: Known by various names -- margs, bahaks or dhoks in Jammu and Kashmir and thach and bugiyals in Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh -- alpine grasses and meadows account for 114,250 sq km of the land area in the Himalaya. Grazing, controlled by community regulations that the pastoralists observe, appears to be sustainable. Humid grasslands of the Himalayan terai region and the Brahamaputra valley have become severely fragmented and remnants can now be found only in some of the protected areas.

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What's eating the grasslands?

Scientists complain that overgrazing does not give the grasslands a chance to recover. Consequently, perennial grasses are replaced by seasonal varieties that have a low nutritional value. "Overgrazed rangelands also get infested by a variety of exotic weeds, many of which have spread at a really alarming rate over the past 3-4 decades," says S S Parihar, scientist at igfri. Exotic weeds are known to release chemicals that inhibit the germination of native grasses.

But it is not just the livestock that is destroying grasslands, says L N Modi of the Bharatiya Cattle Research and Development Foundation, a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation (ngo). He feels that land grabbing -- conversion of grazing lands to other uses -- is more to blame than overgrazing cattle. "Grazing by cattle is not unsustainable as they cannot remove the grass from the roots. Besides, the dung and urine help in regeneration," he says.

"Poor management and constant grazing are responsible for most of these rangelands becoming less productive, providing the livestock with progressively less herbage and nutrition," says Panjab Singh of igkvv, Jabalpur. This means that more animals are required to produce the same amount of milk, putting further pressure on resources. It has also caused a shift in livestock: from cows and buffaloes to goats, which are extremely adaptive and can consume virtually any biomass, right down to the roots. Goats, therefore, pose the greatest threat to grasslands.

N S Jodha, analyst at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, says: "The livestock economy of India is characterised by low productivity, overpopulation of animals and their poor management and maintenance of stock." Most of the livestock depends on common property resources (cprs) for grazing, accessible to every member of the specific village community with no exclusive ownership right to anyone. As use of cprs does not involve additional expenses, most villagers stock up animals regardless of whether they are productive or not. "Whatever little production they extract is a small gain for them," says Jodha. It is a vicious cycle: the productivity of the cprs declines, which, in turn, further reduces the productivity of the livestock.

Whose land is it anyway?
Village common lands and cultivable wastelands, formerly available for grazing, are being diverted to other uses, both by the State and the panchayats (village councils). "In village Ambabai of Jhansi district, the common land has been allotted by the panchayat for the construction of a hospital. Permission for removal of truckloads of soil has also been granted," informs P S Tomer, director, igfri. "Examples of such instances abound," he adds.

Land reforms introduced by the government have reduced the area under grasslands as well as the diversity of lands under cprs. A study of 11 villages from three districts of Rajasthan indicated a decline of 55 per cent in the area under cprs. A study by International Centre for Research in Semi-Arid Tropics, Hyderabad, indicated that since the 1950s, the area under cprs has gone down by 60-70 per cent in 80 villages of 20 districts in seven states. While the issue of land rights evokes friction between the forest department and livestock owners, areas under the revenue department are being diverted to other uses, such as redistribution to the landless. Village common lands are degraded, and suffer from what is known as 'the tragedy of commons': lands formerly managed and protected collectively are now used without a sense of ownership or responsibility.

So, rangeland managers and scientists cannot pass the buck on to overgrazing, as was done in the early 1980s in the Keoladeo Ghana National Park in Bharatpur, Rajasthan. A total ban on grazing was imposed in the wetland. A conflict ensued between the forest department and the local graziers, leading to a bloody protest that claimed 7 lives. But the ban has proved disastrous for the birds for which the sanctuary was created. In absence of buffaloes, grass grew amuck, choking shallow waterbodies and rendering homeless the winter geese and other birds.

Lack of research
There is no pure grassland sanctuary or park where all the elements of a grass ecosystem can be studied, says Rahmani. The diversity of rangeland species thus cannot be covered under protected areas. "Protection is only accorded when the region is declared a protected area for its flora and fauna," points out Rahmani.

Grass species are a low priority in research and conservation efforts. Good quality seeds are not available. Instances of farmers' successful attempts at grass cultivation are not recognised or encouraged. Range genetic resources can be conserved in gene banks or in fields. However, conservation efforts are tricky and difficult, and require a certain degree of skill (see box: Conservationists in the dark).

While efforts to conserve grass biodiversity are inadequate, farmers desiring to cultivate good quality grass cannot get good quality seeds. J P Singh of National Dairy Development Board, New Delhi, says: "Against a requirement of 150-170 metric tonnes of breeder seeds, the availability is 30-50 metric tonnes. With a shortfall in breeder seeds (which are supplied by the Central government to various states for further development and distribution to farmers) of more than 80 per cent, how can farmers even attempt to cultivate their fields? This gap is only going to widen. Besides, most government attempts at greening with grasses are on degraded and eroded lands -- grasses are already at a disadvantage."

A question of policy and management
Management of rangelands and pastures involves the integration of various operations: fencing, soil and water conservation, improved grazing practices and increasing the productivity of pastures.

"On one hand is the fodder crisis, and on the other fodder is wasted. About 300 million tonnes of fodder can be made available for cattle if it were not simply burnt, as in Punjab, where it causes major air pollution, or diverted to industry or simply allowed to rot," says Modi. This amounts to the destruction of a national asset. In the European Union, burning of fodder is banned, Modi points out. However, the Indian government does not give any incentives for the use of crop residues as fodder.

At the same time there are incentives from the ministry for non-conventional energy to burn sugarcane residue for power generation. Modi observes that this residue can be very good fodder if it is treated with the addition of molasses. Failure to identify and implement such simple solutions results in greater threats to the ecology down the road, and this is the central flaw in the centralised planning structure of the government. Rangelands have clearly suffered due to this. Grasslands will not exist for long if some policy changes are not made and implemented immediately. They include:

lGovernment stress on quality of livestock, rather than quantity.

lOvergrazing may be an important reason for degradation but the onus really rests with institutional policies rather than the livestock owners.

lA long-term strategy based on sound research needs to be chalked out to meet production targets with fewer animals.

lThere is no rangeland policy. As things stand, the Union ministry of environment and forests and the ministry of agriculture are quibbling over whose baby grazing really is. Existing policies for pastoral areas fail to appreciate the practical or valuable implications of traditional pastoral systems. These systems should be researched objectively and improved upon to meet current requirements.

lA national policy on livestock population and the creation of forage resources has to be formulated -- and implemented. Public support will come forth only if some alternative arrangement to meet grazing requirements can be suggested.

lBefore any programme for rangeland development is even considered, it is essential that local needs be integrated into the science of it.

1One of the biggest gaps is the absolute lack of data and surveys. This situation needs to be corrected on priority.

If these policy and management issues are not tackled with urgency, the survival of the abundant rangeland biodiversity, the livestock, and the rural economy will be jeopardised beyond repair.

With reports by Kazimuddin Ahmed from Rajasthan and Gujarat