Indian dairy ABSYSs facing local and global challenges

To achieve this objective, we propose an original multidisciplinary, multi-scalar and long-term perspective approach, drawing together several sources of data coming from national statistics and surveys as well as interviews carried out during long and meticulous fieldwork.
We combine two specific conceptual frameworks – agrarian system (WP1) and market functioning institutional analyses (WP3) – with two sets of methods for environmental impact assessment (WP2) and national biophysical accounting (WP4).
We consider five interlocked scales of analysis, using a clear concept for each of them and putting the “local” at the core of the research, where the coevolution between ecosystems, farming practices and market insertion can be characterised.

WP1: Differentiation of Indian dairy farms : WP1 focuses on the changing place of livestock farming in farmers’ communities and aims at highlighting the differentiation process of dairy systems during the last six decades, in technical and socio-economical terms.
WP2: Impact of livestock farming on local and global ecosystems
WP3: Dairy producers’ access to markets: WP3 focuses on the private, collective and public levers to create inclusive and stable conditions for farmers to access markets and aims at shedding light on the way the transformation of the supply chains in their diversity (informal, cooperative or private, including the diversity of each type) has impacted farmers’ production models in the last 60 years. The structuring role of the cooperative movement in supporting the pro-poor development of the dairy sector will be questioned as well
WP4: Indian dairy and metabolic transformation of the Indian economy: The ambition of WP4 is to assess the growing importance of the Indian dairy sector within the bio-economic metabolic regime of India, in order to better identify the specificities and challenges of the Indian structural transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society