Crossbred Cattle Adoption and Its Impact on Income and Household Milk Consumption among Dairy Farmers: Empirical Evidence from Assam

The paper examines the treatment effects of adopting crossbred cattle on household income from various sources and per capita consumption of self-produced milk. The study has used Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method for impact evaluation based on a cross-sectional data set of 245 dairy farming households (137 crossbred cattle adopters and 108 non-adopters) collected from three districts of Assam, namely Barpeta, Sonitpur and Karbi Anglong. The study shows that adoption of crossbred cattle has statistically significant effect on increasing the dairy income and livestock income, but not on crop/plantation income and off-farm income. The examination of other outcome variable namely, farm milk consumption indicates that there is significant causal relationship between adoption of crossbred cattle and increased per capita consumption of milk. The results strongly recommends that diffusion of crossbreeding programme can play an important role in increasing farm level income and milk consumption supplementing nutritional needs of the smallholder dairy farmers and have the implications on partially meeting United Nation's sustainable development goals of no poverty and zero hunger.