Analysis of socioeconomic profile of dairy farmers – practicing organic and non-organic farming

Sustainability is the end goal of organic farming and sustainability includes social, economical and ecological components and these characteristics play an important role in influencing the farmers to practice organic dairy farming. As their education level and awareness about the advantages of the organic farming will influence them for conversion in to organic dairy farming. Indians being small and medium farmers the labour intensive nature of the various dairying aspects makes impossible for the small to medium farmers to get remunerative prices. Though livestock forms an integral part in practicing organic agriculture they limit their production only upto organic agriculture and do not go for organic dairying due to highly perishable nature of milk and milk products. High capital requirement for starting the organic dairy farming and extremely low returns in the process of conversion from non organic to organic farming discourages farmers to take up organic dairy farming as majority of the farmers are middle class and cannot afford to start organic dairy farming.