How the changing weather is decreasing milk yield in India

On a humid, late-July day this year, Chandan Singh went to milk his buffaloes, only to find five of them spewing foamy saliva. The village veterinarian diagnosed haemorrhagic septicaemia, a bacterial disease also known as gala ghotu rog. Treatment cost around Rs 15,000, which roughly equates to six weeks of the dairy farmer’s income. Despite this intervention, two of his buffaloes died within days.

“They developed swelling in the throat and the eyes became red. They couldn’t breathe,” Singh says.

Singh, who lives in Punawali Kalan village in the north of India, is not alone in suffering such losses. Around 75 cattle have died within a five-kilometre radius of his village this monsoon. Haemorrhagic septicaemia thrives in moist and humid conditions. This makes it a recurring challenge for farmers, particularly as climate change increases temperatures and intense rainfall events in the region.

This year, Punawali Kalan’s dairy farmers have also experienced plummeting milk yields due to extreme heat waves. Rajkumar Rajput, another local farmer, saw his daily production drop from 45 lites to 30 litres as winter became summer. Rajput supplies the daily milk demands of 40 households and says he “had to buy milk to cover the shortfall”.

In 2017, India’s Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes conducted a study on climate...

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