‘Now my family is complete’: a dairy in arid Marathwada brings migrants home

Livelihoods in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region have been wrecked by the agrarian crisis, but collective dairy farming provides a viable alternative to farmers and migrants who returned during the pandemic

Shekhar Paigude

Angad Taur

A local collection centre of Marathwada dairy near Satefal village in Beed district of Marathwada.

Angad Taur/The Migration Story 

KALAMB, Maharashtra: When dairy helper Ramkumar Machave returned home to his arid Satefal village in Beed from Ahilyanagar district (formerly Ahmednagar) during the pandemic lockdown five years ago, he didn’t quite realise then he had embarked on a new career path. 

Machave, 28, had migrated to Ahmednagar five years ago and had been working at a dairy as a helper since then. Weather extremes had eroded his farm income in a region that has for years made national headlines for relentless droughts and mounting debts fuelling farmer suicides. The money he made was never enough, but kept him and his family of five afloat, until the pandemic struck.

Like tens of thousands of informal workers across India, Machave lost work, saw his savings dwindle and felt trapped in his village when he found out about a local dairy project that has offered a rare livelihood opportunity for farmers and returning migrants for over a decade.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to survive only on farming, so I approached the village milk collection centre and that’s how I found out about Marathwada Dairy,” Machave told The Migration Story, sitting in front of his brick house, fodder bags stacked in one corner, his child on a swing.

Run collectively by 4,000 farmers from Beed, Dharavshiv and Solapur districts, the Marathwada Agro Process Farmer Producer Company Limited – known locally as Marathwada Dairy – offered Machave a zero-interest loan of ₹25,000 in 2020.

Founded in 2012 as a self-help group by local farmers of Marathwada who wished to arrest migration and revive their villages, the dairy was registered as a farmer producer organisation in 2016. But its endeavour to empower locals with a livelihood opportunity remained unchanged. 

With a loan from the dairy, Machave bought his first cow and by 2021, he started supplying milk to the company’s collection centre in his village.

Ramkumar Machave poses for a picture with his mother (left) and wife in Satefal village in Beed district of Marathwada. Shekhar Paigude/The Migration Story 

“With farming, we wait three to four months for any crop to yield returns. But dairying pays me every ten days. I don’t feel any (financial burden) now,” said Machave, sharing his milk collection is to the tune of 30 litres daily and he saves up to 15,000 rupees every month, a ten-fold rise from the 1500 rupees he was able to save from the monthly salary of 8000 rupees he earned at the agro-processing unit.

Rising agrarian distress owing to dropping incomes from farming on the back of high farm input costs and erratic weather among other factors is a key reason for rural to urban migration. While there are state-run schemes that guarantee rural jobs and encourage self-employment, many seek better-paying opportunities. 

In the drought-ravaged Marathwada region, a third of its 18.7 million population, as per the last census, lives below the poverty line, research shows. The region is least urbanised in Maharashtra and most of its agricultural land is dry. Add to that unseasonal rains, crop pricing mechanisms, indebtedness and inconsistent government policies that have crippled agriculture in this region.

But this dairy project, over a decade old, has turned around the fortunes of at least a few hundred farmers and their families.

Machave’s mother Ashabai is at peace that her grandsons are now living with her,  and her son is available for any emergency. The village dairy, she said, has helped them cope with farm losses. 

“I take care of the cows like my grandsons,” she said, adding “the family was incomplete when Ramkumar was out for work”.

“Now, he is in front of my eyes at all times. His child wipes his hand on my saree. This is the best feeling for any grandmother. Now, the family is complete.”

THE DAIRY

A local farmer carries green feed for his cattle near Satefal village in Beed district of Marathwada.

Angad Taur/The Migration Story

About five farmers of Marathwada had started the dairy in 2012, but it now boasts of a network of 4,000 farmers spread across 200 villages in Beed, Dharashiv and Solapur districts, and collects nearly 50,000 litres of milk every day.

At the helm is Balasaheb Gitte, Marathwada Dairy’s CEO, a food technology engineer, told The Migration Story that such taluka-level agro-processing companies can help retain people in the villages.

“Initially, we were collecting milk for big brands like Britannia. Later, we understood that (procuring) allied agri-products is important if we want to keep farmers in this business. Hence we started milk processing plants and now we sell a range of products like milk, ice cream, butter and curd in the Dharashiv, Latur and Solapur markets,” he said.

As a farmer producer organisation, the company is owned by a group of farmers, 90% of the profit made is divided among farmers-members and the remaining 10% is used for daily operations. But profit distribution is done only after farmers are paid for the milk and allied products they supply to the company. 

Farmers said the dairy paid them a price which was often better than the state-governed market price - pricing their milk at 33 rupees per litre, when the market rates hover between 28 and 33 rupees.

The company currently employs 200 young people, has purchased 58 vehicles for milk collection, and hired 125 workers at its processing plants, including women, which, Gitte said, has helped to stem the tide of rural-to-urban migration. 

Balasahed Gitte, CEO of Marathwada Dairy, at his office in Kalamb in Dharashiv district of Marathwada.

Angad Taur /The Migration Story

“We wanted the villages to be alive – many have only elderly people – and for youngsters to get employment locally,” said Gitte. 

“We have succeeded in doing this to a certain extent, at least in our area. We gave soft (low-interest) loans to farmers to buy cows and buffaloes, encouraged youngsters to buy vehicles to transport milk, and stood in as their guarantors for banks. Farmers here have no option better than milk,” he said.

WORSENING CLIMATE CRISIS

According to data from the Centre for Science and Environment, the number of extreme weather events recorded in Maharashtra in the first ten months of 2022, 2023 and 2024, were 112, 106 and 142, respectively. Additionally, in 2023, 62,052 hectares of crop area were damaged, and in 2024, the figure more than doubled to 1.9 lakh hectares. 

Between 2019 and 2024, Marathwada recorded 3,940 farmers’ suicides – the highest among all regions in the state – primarily due to rising debts from crop failures year after year. 

Battling rising heat, the region has also recorded erratic rain, including in May, when unseasonal rain halted agricultural activities. 

“We get rain once or twice in May, but it has been raining for the past 15 days – and there is no relief,” said Dhiraj Ghute, a young farmer from Dharashiv’s Aarani village. 

“Pre-cultivation activities (for the kharif or monsoon season) have been halted, and livestock are vulnerable because of the lightning and thunderstorms. The monsoon in the district has also changed over the past few years – we receive a huge amount of rain in a few days; there is no consistency,” Ghute said.

Machave too had suffered crop losses, which had led him to migrate. 

But now, it is business as usual for him. At 7 am, he milks his two hybrid cows and cleans the cowshed. At 8 am, he delivers milk at the village collection centre. In the afternoon, he fetches fresh water for the cows. And before he sleeps at midnight, the 28-year-old makes sure his cows aren’t resting on their udders. They can injure themselves if they do, making their milk unusable.   

But the climate crisis plays out in unusual ways.

Fodder availability for dairy farmers is a challenge as water levels plummet, impacting fodder production. 

Farmers collect dry fodder for the rainy season in Satefal village in Beed district of Marathwada.

Angad Taur /The Migration Story

“Getting natural fodder, especially in the summer, is a major challenge,” Machave said. “But Marathwada Dairy trained us to prepare moorghas, a kind of preserved fodder made of corn which lasts for two to three months.” The company also helps them source dry fodder if there is an acute shortage of it, he said.

Dairy farmers do source natural fodder from local cultivators and the dairy’s CEO Gitte said the quality of dry fodder in Marathwada adds fats to the milk and “hence major dairy giants have started opening collection centres in the region”.

Nevertheless, rising temperatures increase indoor heat and this impacts the amount of milk cattle can produce, especially those housed in traditional cowsheds. 

The bigger dairy farmers with more cows and income have invested to keep their cattle cool.

“I have built an open cowshed surrounded by trees, so we can deal with rising heat. This is a modern cowshed spread over an acre of land for my 65 cows,” said Dynaneshwar Bhosale, an electronics and telecommunications engineer from Dharashiv district’s Hawargaon village, who turned to dairying five years ago, leaving his job at a multinational in Pune.

THE REVIVAL

The popularity of dairying in Marathwada as a livelihood alternative is not new, the revival is. Senior environmental journalist Atul Deulgaonkar, who has written extensively on Marathwada, told The Migration Story that “dairy farming was an attractive agri-allied business in Marathwada before the 1972 drought”.

In fact, he said that Udgir in  Latur district was once known for milk powder. “Cows from Nanded district’s Kandhar taluka have been popular in the state. But people in Marathwada stopped practising dairy farming after the drought hit,” he said.

The success of the Marathwada dairy in arresting migration reflects the massive need for agri-allied businesses in this region to create employment, said Naseem Shaikh, associate programme director at nonprofit Swayam Shikshan Prayog, which works with women farmers’ collectives in the region. 

“Agriculture is not the only business that small and marginal farmers can do here. We need multiple enterprises, considering the changing climate. People should focus on self-employment and agri-allied businesses can play a vital role here,” she said.

Back in Satefal, several young farmers said they were not even considering moving to the city any more.

Among them is Suraj Ingale, 23, who said he had a newfound confidence because of his earnings from supplying the dairy 30 litres of milk every day. Though his family has their own farm, he said that his two cows and two buffaloes were the reason for his financial independence. 

“I had to discontinue my studies after matriculation. We have around 10 acres of non-irrigated, rain-fed land, so we rely only on soyabean cultivation but prices have dropped a lot,” he said. 

Fortunately, dairying gave him the regular income farming never could. He has been supplying milk to the company since 2022, but it has never missed a single payment, he said. He has even contemplated buying more cows to increase his daily milk collection. 

“Because of the (regular) payment cycle, I can keep the money with me. We also have natural compost to use on the farm. If dairy had not been an option for me, my parents would have told me to go to Pune or Mumbai. But here in the village, I earn as much as I would in the city. So I never think about migrating.”

Edited by Subuhi Jiwani

Shekhar Paigude is a Pune-based independent journalist with a strong focus on climate change and its impact on rural communities. 

Angad Taur is an independent journalist and researcher who reports on rural issues with specific interest in agricultural communication and rural storytelling.