Vol. 3, Issue 7, Part B (2017)

Abstract
The dairy industry in India has been witnessing rapid growth since liberalization and ranks first in Milk Production in the world. The country's milk supply comes from millions of small producers, who are dispersed throughout the rural areas. All these farmers maintain an average herd of one or two milch animals, comprising cows and/or buffaloes. Ample labour and a small land base encourage farmers to practice dairying as an occupation subsidiary to agriculture. The current paper is an attempt to understand the socio- economic conditions and income generating activities of rural dairy farmers in six taluks in Davanagere District. Most respondents owned cows and many of them owned buffaloes. The respondents owned more of cross cows and local buffaloes. The respondents did not possess adequate livestock to make enough profits or to commercialize dairy farming. The average yield per buffalo and per cow is very less compared to the international standards. Concerted efforts should henceforth be directed towards the dairy farmers contributing major proportion of our country’s milk production to provide necessary input, especially to the landless and marginal farmers, and make them adopt newer technologies in breeding, housing, feeding, rearing and health care to ensure substantial growth in milk output and increase the contribution of dairy income to their total income.