Abstract
The study aimed at judging the economic viability of ADBP's small farmers Dairy Development Loans. The data collected from Sialkol area were analysed by using discounted measures of project worth. At 15%, the net present worth was cal-culated to be 3953 and IRR was 39.9%. The results of the study provided enough evidence to conclude that Dairy Development Scheme was viable and economically feasible. It is, therefore, suggested that institutional financing for Dairy Develop-ment should be organized on a wider scale in the country for improving income and employment situation of the small farmers.
INTRODUCTION
Dairy enterprise has been considered as an important activity to enhance income levels of rural families especially the small farmers and landless agricultural labourers. The spread of income over the lactation period, availability of family labour and crop residues make dairy animal raising particu-larly suitable to low income families. Major-ity of our farming population consists of small farmers, who constitute about 75% of the total number of farms and operate nearly 39% of the total cultivated area in Pakistan. There is a need to improve the economic conditions of this huge segment of our farming sector. Dairy enterprise can be taken up as one of the alternatives to raise the income level of this poverty stricken group. However, in view of the fact that buffalo and cattle prices have increased manifold in recent years, starling a dairy enterprise even on a small scale requires substantial initial investment which many small farm households cannot afford from r.heir own resources. Therefore, the organization of an effective credit pro-gramme for the acquisition of dairy animals
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by small farmers becomes an important ac-tivity. Number of studies conducted previ-ously have shown that loaning activity for dairy development has significant impact on farmers income and employment level (Blishter, 1988; Sexena and Mathur, 1988; Singh and Singh, 1989). Agricultural Devel-opment Bank of Pakistan is advancing loans to small farmers for dairy development. Lit-tle information is available under our condi-tions to precisely know the economic viabil-ity of such loans. The present study is an en-deavour in this direction and aims at gen-erating information for organizing an ap-propriate credit policy for small farmers Dairy Development Programme in the country
