This book argues for a people-focused approach to livestock development, giving high priority to the public goods aspects of poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, food security and safety, and animal welfare. It outlines the primary policy/technology framework for the main production systems and concludes with an eleven point Action Plan for the sector.

Between 1970 and 2009, India has overcome many infrastructural, market, and institutional challenges to transition from a dairy importing nation to the top producer in the world of both buffalo and goat milk, as well as the sixth largest producer of cow milk. In India, at least 100 million households are involved in farming and 70 million have dairy cattle. In India, dairy production is important for employment, income levels, and the nutritional quality of diets. Milk production in India is dominated by smallholder farmers including landless agricultural workers. For example, 80 percent of milk comes from farms with only two to five cows. A well-known smallholder dairy production initiative, Operation Flood, laid the foundation for a dairy cooperative movement that presently ensures returns on dairy investments to 13 million members. Operation Flood also advanced infrastructural improvements to enable the procurement, processing, marketing, and production of milk and to link India's major metropolitan cities with dairy cooperatives nationwide. This intervention transformed the policy environment, brought significant technological advancements into the rural milk sector, established many village cooperatives, and oriented the dairy industry toward markets.

In 2015, the 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide development actions of governments, international agencies, civil society and other institutions over the next 15 years (2016–2030). The SDGs aim to end poverty (SDG1) and hunger (SDG2) while restoring and sustainably managing natural resources. The number of people in the world suffering from hunger increased in 2014–2017, reversing the declining trend in undernourishment seen since 2005. In light of the renewed international commitment to reduce hunger, the potential of dairy development to contribute to poverty reduction and the potential of dairy nutrition in young children, the aim of this study is to collate and review available evidence for a causal relationship between: (i) milk / dairy consumption and (ii) ownership of dairy animals and reduced levels of child undernutrition (HAZ, stunting and WAZ, underweight) in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs).

For activists by Upendra Baxi.