FOOTLOOSE FOOD - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 160

ies through milk processors based in 176 districts. 43 The dairy sector in India employs 18
million people, 5.5 per cent of the entire workforce, of whom 58 per cent are women, and
69 per cent from disadvantaged groups. 44 Whereas the green revolution in India has been
widely criticized for forcing peasants off the land, the white revolution has been widely ap-
plauded for providing livelihoods to the land-poor.
This success is testimony to the smallholder sector's resilience and ability to deliver,
which is mirrored by a similar successes for small scale dairy production in Kenya, and
by figures from the Polish dairy industry before the EU laid their hands on it. 45 It is also
testimony to the ability of a still partly default livestock system to deliver a substantial
quantity of animal protein under conditions of considerable population pressure. It makes a
revealing comparison with China where rather more animal protein is provided per capita,
through grain fed pigs and chickens. The Chinese have about 70 per cent as much agricul-
tural land per person as the Indians; but they use 2.4 times as much nitrogen fertilizer per
person. 46 Meat is increasingly being reared in factories, with the result that between 1985
and 2005 the number of farming households keeping poultry declined from 44 per cent to
14 per cent - while 140 million former peasants are now migrant workers in cities, de-
pendent upon fossil fuels and the buying power of the West for their employment and their
wellbeing. 47
The divergent paths taken by India and China are only partly due to the fact that mono-
gastrics are more susceptible to industrialization than ruminants because of their need for
concentrates. In fact a firm called Keggfarms in India has had remarkable success breed-
ing a high yielding 'smallholder chicken', the Kuroiler, a dual purpose bird for eggs and
meat which also has magnificent plumage - an important feature for many of the women
who look after them. The day old chicks are reared for three weeks in 1,500 'Mother Units'
scattered around the country, and then distributed to villages by dealers called pherriwal-
lahs who transport them in baskets on bicycles or by public transport. 48
The differences between India and China probably have more to do with political cir-
cumstance than with their respective preferences for milk and white meat. India's peasantry
has been represented by a decentralized but influential network of Gandhian self-help or-
ganizations and unions, whereas China's was championed by a Maoist government whose
authoritarian excesses led to its downfall and replacement by a cadre of urban capitalists.
There is a danger that India's dairy industry might yet take the same direction, largely be-
cause of aggressive moves being taken by supermarket firms such as Tesco and Carrefour
to monopolize and centralize milk distribution. 49
In any event, the white revolution in milk production has already taken some steps down
the road towards industrialization by breeding to improve dairy production at the expense
of draught ability. 'Milk production is increasingly becoming a major objective of bovine