Arunachal Pradesh: Mithun milk churpi could improve farmer incomes

Churpi, a variety of hardened cheese, is a popular traditional snack in the Himalayan belt of Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and parts of northeastern India. Primarily made from yak milk, it can also be made using cow or buffalo milk, and even the milk of chauris, a crossbreed of yak and cow. Arunachal Pradesh is known for its Geographical Indication tagged churpi made from yak milk.

Recently, a farmer from the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh has developed churpi made from the milk of mithun – a semi-domesticated bovine species (Bos frontalis) native to Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland. Mithun has a very limited geographical distribution.

An adult weighs between 400 and 600 kg and its productive life ranges from 16 to 18 years. Mithuns produce one calf every year.

Tadang Tamut, who comes from a line of mithun farmers, collaborated with Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s National Research Centre on Mithunin Nagaland, to explore the idea of mithun churpi.

Traditionally, yak churpi is fermented and smoked over several months or even years to develop its characteristic hard texture.

Although Arunachal Pradesh is known for yak churpi production, the Siang district, where Tamut hails from, has no native yak population and therefore no tradition of making churpi. Instead, the local community rears...

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