Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 7

The Army is in the middle of a “socially sensitive issue”. With its military farms slated to be shut within three months, it does not know what to do with more than 25,000 head of cattle at these farms. Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha will chair a meeting tomorrow to deal with the issue of allocating the cattle to the Agriculture Ministry for further use by the Animal Husbandry Department.Some of the cattle at the 39 military farms across the country are of a specific high-yield variety. These farms meet 14 per cent of the 210 million litres of annual milk supply needed for the 1.3 million strong Army. The rest is procured through various coops.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)These   farms, started by the British  in1889, have outlived their utility as milk supply is no more an issue.  The farms are spread over 20,000 acres of prime Defence land that is now needed for new projects, such as upcoming ground-based missile storage, aviation, new raisings and for housing for jawans.The decision to close down the military farms was in fact taken in 2013 after a meeting of Army Commanders. While 29 farms were to be shut between 2013 and 2015, the remaining 10 were to be closed by 2017. However, there were some hiccups in implementing the decision and the MoD handed over 30 acres of land under the Military Farm Meerut to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for developing a cow breed.Earlier, the cantonments were largely isolated from towns and cities. But with rapid urbanisation, most cantonments are now located within population clusters. The ‘white revolution’ in the seventies changed everything and now milk availability is  a non-issue. On June 1 this year, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh reeled out figures at a public function, saying “India is a world leader in milk production for the past 15 years… milk production is (now) 465.5 million tonnes”.The military farms are located in places like Ahmednagar, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Secunderabad, Mhow, Jhansi, Dimapur, Guwahati, Jorhat, Panagarh, Kolkata, Ambala, Jalandhar, Agra, Pathankot, Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Kanpur, Ranikhet, Jammu, Srinagar, Kargil and Udhampur.Personnel at the military farms, including more than 20 officers, will be progressively transferred to other wings and departments.

39 farms in all

• At Ahmednagar, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Secunderabad, Mhow, Jhansi, Dimapur, Guwahati, Jorhat, Panagarh, Kolkata, Ambala, Jalandhar, Agra, Pathankot, Allahabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Kanpur, Ranikhet, Jammu, Srinagar, Kargil and Udhampur