Prior to starting our farming journey, from the vegan movement in the west, we had formed the impression that humans steal milk from cows. But, our judgement and inference over the last 3 years of gathering knowledge and experience, seems to suggest that the actual reality is much more nuanced than that.

Disclaimer : I was raised as and I am still a lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

~ 5 minute read

Humans have selected cattle for milk production among other reasons over several generations for the last ~10000 years. Obviously, the calves need a minimum amount of milk for their growth and development. The extra milk that we get from the cows is a result of selective breeding by our ancestors. The truth of the matter is that both humans and cattle have domesticated each other. Humans have evolved to tolerate lactose; and bos taurus indicus has evolved to depend on cultivated fodder and the security we provide from wild animals. Whole milk was one of the reasons, the other economic reasons for rearing cattle was for ploughing, for their cow dung and urine to fertilize the fields. Because of their uses in the rural landscape, they were often a sign of wealth.

Modern cattle breeding and the White Revolution relies on artificial insemination, grain feed and a lot of convincing that dairy products are essential to the human body.

• Artificial insemination is done to ensure that high milk producing breeds are propagated. A disastrous consequence for the ecology because of this is that a lot of local native genetic diversity is lost over decades. This makes livestock less tolerant to diseases and drought like conditions, which are now frequent as a result of climate change.
• The natural resources, water-land- nutrients, needed to boost milk production by feeding grains to cows is enormous. In this era of climate change, we need to reduce our resource consumption, not increase it. The western economies have mostly relied on intense inhumane feedlot operations to raise cattle for dairy and meat. India, even after 5 decades after Operation Flood, continues to rely on small and medium farmers to raise cattle, which is a good thing from a food sovereignty perspective. But, in order to boost milk production, Indian farmers have started to rely on grains (rice) distributed by PDS, which is meant for the poor and the disadvantaged sections of the society. The amount of land required to produce rice and concentrated feed for cows is much larger than when they would be grazed in unutilized land. Without concentrated feed, which has a massive ecological footprint, it wouldn’t be possible to provide for current milk availability.
• The premise that milk consumption per capita needs to increase to provide adequate nutrition to humans is built on shaky grounds. What humans need for balanced development of the body and the mind is a diverse diet in which animal products are just a part, not one rich in animal products. In the tropics and subtropics, a diverse plant based diet is easy to maintain at scale. This has been made amply clear by a lot of research over the years. Our ancestors in the sub continent supplemented their diets with little bit of ghee, butter, buttermilk and milk only whenever there was excess and yet lived long & healthy lives.

Veganism is a response to the inumane practices of cattle rearing and meat heavy diets in the west. While Indian farmers have started abandoning cattle when it is no longer economically viable for them, cows and domesticated animals are generally treated much more humanely relative to the west. India is also known to be one of the lowest meat consumers per capita in the globe – only Bangladesh ranks lower than us.

Even for milk consumption per capita, we are around the median range. We are already mostly vegan or vegetarian, or as Robin Singh of Peepal Farm says, Veganish. The focus needs to be, in mid-may meals and in our overarching food & agriculture policy decisions to include more local greens, vegetables, fruits and pulses in our children’s diets; for they are known to address malnutrition, hunger much more efficiently.

These are the reasons we moved to native cows in the beginning of 2021. My mother also encouraged us to spend our efforts in saving native breeds, rather than raise exotic or hybrid breeds. While there is enough said about the benefits of milk in media – advertising and ancient wisdom, there isn’t enough spoken about the consequential impact of raising cattle the way it is being done right now. One of the ways for South Indian society to reverse the trend is to go back to enjoying the tasty & flavourful sukku karupatti kaapi more than the quintessential filter kaapi. Please have less of paneer butter masalas, ghee-based sweets and more of keerais, poriyals, sundals and fruits 🙂

Regards

Sudhakar

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