Indiscriminate pursuit of cross-breeding technology neglected high quality indigenous cattle species
Often we pay a high price for neglecting our heritage. In the context of indigenous breeds of cattle a recent report in The Indian Express (7 March 2025) with the tell-tale title “World’s costliest cow—booming in Brazil but dwindling in India’ says it all. This report tells that while a purebred Ongole cow was sold for INR 400 million in Brazil some time back, this species—one of 53 indigenous cattle varieties in India-- has been recording fast decreasing numbers in the country of its origin (India) where its number has declined at a fast pace despite well-recognized qualities of suitability to local climate conditions, strength, ability to survive on low level of fodder supply and disease resistance.
The livestock research station at Guntur has been carrying out a lonely battle to maintain the purity of the breed. There are only a few such efforts in the country. Despite all the claims regarding dairy development in India, the protection of indigenous species of cows and bullocks has not received adequate attention. In fact several reports and research papers have been voicing caution regarding the decline of desi (indigenous) breeds of cows and bullocks.
India is a land known for breeds of cattle of outstanding quality - the Sahiwal, Red Sindhi, Rathi, Tharparkar, Hariana, Ongole, Kankreji, Gir etc. Unfortunately protection of these breeds has been neglected in recent decades despite lip sympathy being paid to this repeatedly.
According to a report by the Akhil Bharat Krishi Goseva Sangh (ABKGS), "We possess some wonderful time-tested breeds of cattle, capable of yielding under severe Indian conditions, even by mere grazing, up to 10-12 seers of milk a day. There are of course better breeds which under better methods of upkeep and special feeding yield as much as 30-35 seers. Some of the breeds have been specially developed for draught purposes (e.g. Amrit Mahal), and have won world-wide acclaim for their traction power. On natural foraging alone, our cattle are able to maintain themselves in good bodily condition and health. These are being purchased at fancy prices by foreigners only for two basic qualities, viz. economic maintenance and disease resistance."
The demand of Indian cattle and buffaloes abroad for breeding purposes goes back to quite old times. Commenting on this Shanti George, an expert on dairy sector, has written, "The result of this export can be seen in the Indu-brazil strain that is more disease resistant than the 'Brahman' breed now entrenched in the warmer chimes of the US and in Southern Africa. Abroad, pure lines of these breeds are carefully maintained: In Australia fairly recently a pure Indian bull changed hands for $75,000. In their native land, however, their fate has been quite different. Whilst other tropical countries import Indian cattle to breed their animals stronger and hardier, India herself is frantically importing European breeds to make her zebus more delicate and demanding."
The indiscriminate pursuit of cross-breeding technology has led to the neglect of high quality indigenous breeds. Several experts have expressed regret at this neglect and the threat it poses to indigenous breeds.
Cattle play a very important role in India's rural life. Those not familiar with the Indian rural scene are sometimes surprised how subsisting on (what by western standards is regarded as a very low quality diet) roughages and crop residues, the Indian cattle are able to perform manifold services in conditions of climatic stress (heat and humidity). This is possible because Indian cattle breed have evolved over a long period to perform these roles in difficult conditions.
It was keeping in view this importance and special qualities of Indian cattle that the cross-breeding policies of the government had been opposed for several decades by several experts.
The ABKGS has been very critical of the official policy, "Exotic crossing was foisted with utter disregard to work achieved by Animal Husbandry Directors in pursuance of the State's Cattle Breeding Policy. This ruined whatever systematic and sensible 'Samvardhan" had been accomplished. Thus if an area was earmarked for pure Thaparkar, Malvi or Sahiwal upgrading or selective breeding for some years, the Dairy Department felt no hesitation in ruining the good work already done by superimposing exotic crossing in what they considered their milk-shed area for intensive hybridization work."
What is more, the cross breeding work has often been done in a very careless way which has further increased the dangers arising from this work. According to a paper by B. Sivaram titled 'Cross-breeding in Cattle", "The exotics selected for the programme were originally gathered unscientifically. The criterion was the willingness of foreign countries to gift the bulls to us. Barring certain honourable exceptions, the bulk of the material so imported was without a proper pedigree. There was no science in the programme."
As the decision of large scale cross-breeding policies had been taken in a hurry several confusions about the work continued to persist regarding how exactly the work was to be taken further. According to a paper by P.N. Bhat "Scientists with extra-ordinary zeal have been changing the breeding design at the slightest occasion without considering its lingering impact."
These short-comings and confusions, apart from some inherent problems, in cross-breeding work in India (for instance the lower-ability of the cross-breeds to adapt to Indian conditions) led to a high incidence of diseases in the cross-breed cattle.
The debate goes back to well before independence when the Royal Commission on Agriculture opined that the government's agricultural department should not take up experiments on cross-breeding and should instead concentrate their efforts on improving the milking qualities of indigenous breeds like Sahiwal and Sindhi or specially selected strains of breeds like Hariana. In 1938 Col. Oliver, animal husbandry expert of the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research wrote that it was unsound to introduce European breeds in India and it would be a better policy to effect systematic improvement in the indigenous stock through selective breeding, better feeding and improved management.
Around the same time another expert O Norman Wright, referring to the attempts that were being made to improve size and productive quality of small country-based stock by supplying large-sized and high-potential size, warned that such attempts might do more harm than good unless they were accompanied by measures to improve on the environment including the feeding. In 1944, the Government of India invited another expert R.A. Pepperall, to survey the dairy situation in the country. While emphasizing the need for increasing milk production, he warned against embarking on a policy of cross-breeding with European bulls.
One of the first official documents on Indian dairy development had emphasised - "There is no doubt that the general adoption of a policy of cross-breeding to raise the milk yields of a country stock would be fatal to the development of sound dairying in India." Such voices of caution continued to get reasonable attention till the mid or late sixties but this concern was completely set aside with the advent of Operation Flood. The government's animal husbandry policy after this got obsessed with cross breeding of cows.
An Expert Committee, co-ordinated by the ABKGS said "It seems to be the greatest tragedy in India, that although all those who mattered - bureaucrats, scientists and politicians - have never had any doubt that some of the prize winning Indian cattle breeds (Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Tharparkar, Hariana, Red Sindhi etc. to name a few) should be developed into giving much more milk than they do at present, no effort has been made, not even after gaining independence, in that direction. On the contrary, every one of them seems to have fallen prey to the gifts and loans from abroad, to take to exotic cross-breeding... Most of those who are front-rank supporters of exotic cross-breeding... today, have been silent spectators of, if not actual participants, in the systematic degeneration, downfall and near extermination of our best breeds through neglect, boarding on callousness, through the past decades."
In another report ABKGS has said, "By what would in retrospect appear to be total brain-washing if not downright corruption, at various levels, we fell prey to the temptation and accepted, nay welcomed with profound gratitude exotic breeds from any and all "kind-hearted" donor countries without considering whether the gifted specimens, or even herds, were really of a distinctly superior type or that they will withstand the Indian soil and climate to maintain the performance at the pail, or that we would not be importing serious disease hazards… Some herds (Red Dane in Karnataka) had to be destroyed due to tuberculosis and the imported semen of some of the breeds in Tamil Nadu carried an infective virus. We have also seen instances where the performance of the imported breeds kept under very expensive lordly care was not at all markedly superior or encouraging and the same had deteriorated sufficiently in a few years to come on par with our much maligned 'non-descript" desi cow. Also the problems of new diseases crop up generation after generation."
Shanti George has summed up the milch stock policy, "The intention of this policy was to streamline the bovine population in the interests of economy and efficiency. Yet this is attempted - most uneconomically and inefficiently - through concentration on the wrong bovine, bypassing the already specialized and more promising buffalo and subverting the zebu from primary draught power production to specialized dairying, and substituting a relationship of competition between buffalo and crossbreed cow for the present complementarily between buffalo and zebu cow."
Further, the official policy makers have ignored the adverse consequences on fodder and feed availability of their polices. Shanti George asserts that strategies with respect to breed have been such as to aggravate the problems of feed. "For instead of breeding to enhance the capacity of native cattle to operate on inferior fodder (itself in short-supply) they follow cross breeding methods that produce milch animals which require large quantities of superior nutrients." A.R. Rajpurohit, an expert, after examining critically the performance of crossbreed bullocks as drought animals, pointed out that the physical efficiency of the bullocks should not be confused with the economic efficiency. According to him as a crossbreed bullock required at least 50 per cent more feed than a bullock of indigenous breed, its economic efficiency for the same unit of work output turns out to be only two-thirds that of the latter.
It is possible that cross breed cows may have given satisfactory results on the fields of a few rich farmers on in some selected climatic areas which are very suitable to them. But these are the exception rather than the rule.
According to A. R. Rajapurohit's paper on cross-breeding of Indian cattle, "Such areas are quite few in the country and the scope for the extension of cross-breed cattle is thus highly limited."
At one stage there was a lot of enthusiasm for cross-breeding as it was supposed to be the only available path for spectacular improvement in milk yield. In the craze for big gains, the slow and steady path of development based on improvements of local breeds and giving them better nutrition and care was ignored. This has proved to be counter-productive, especially from the longer-term point of view. It is still not too late to remedy the distortions, and our animal husbandry planners will do well to follow. Shanti George's suggestion that 'speed and spectacle are less imperative in development planning than soundness and sustainability, and those who crave drama in animal life should visit the circus."
In the context of bullocks the technology of sex sorted semen pursued in recent times has been extremely harmful, endangering bullocks which have served the Indian farmer so well for several centuries.
It is also important to understand the role of groups traditionally involved in the breeding of milk and draught animals.
The Royal Commission on Agriculture said in 1928 regarding the existence of very good breeds of cattle in India. "If an inquiry were to be made into the history of such breeding...we believe it would be found, in most cases, that their excellence was due to the care bestowed on them by the professional cattle breeders, usually nomadic... they usually worked under unfavourable conditions, but their skills in selecting and tending cattle was considerable...."Further the Royal Commission emphasised that the official cattle development programmes should strive to make good use of the traditional skills of the breeding castes/groups.
Another expert G.F. Keatings wrote in a 'Note on Cattle in Bombay Presidency' in 1917, "The professional breeders pursue their business with considerable skill and knowledge. They are most careful about mating, practice early castration, herd their animals separately and take them to the best grazing grounds at the best seasons, producing excellent cattle with an expenditure that could hardly be lowered... and sold at a very moderate price."
Shanti George has written about pastoral groups, "Although these castes usually produce milk only subsidiarily to their main business of breeding draught cattle for the use of cultivators, the stock raised by them include high yielding milch buffaloes (like the jaffarabadi that is in considerable demand by dairymen). Many of the cattle breeds they rear are superior milch animals as well as powerful draught stock e.g. the Kankreji breed tended by the Rabaris of Gujarat."
Unfortunately the groups or communities who made such as important contribution to the breeding of good quality cows, buffaloes, bullocks and other domestic animals have themselves fallen on very difficult times. The grazing lands available to them are steadily shrinking. At many places obstacles are being placed on their grazing rights and even on their entry. The establishment of a network of national parks and wild life reserves where their entry is likely to be resisted has also added to their problems.
The government by emphasising cross-breeding has further contributed to marginalising these groups instead of integrating them into the official animal husbandry programme. Another setback to the indigenous breeds is in the deterioration in recent times of of cattle fairs that have been organised all over the country since several centuries.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food, 14 Questions about GM Crops, Animal Husbandry—Emerging Areas of Concern, Planet in Peril, and A Day in 2071. He is grateful to The Farmers’ Forum for encouraging his work on this subject
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