Pedigree pays off in seeds of fortune


How elite buffalo germplasm altered the fortunes of a farmer and what it says about India’s low milk yield

Take him home, he will make you famous one day,” the dying old farmer from Sonipat in Haryana told a young Karamveer Singh 14 years ago. As an obsessive connoisseur of buffaloes, Karamveer, now aged 45, hesitated but ended up paying a hefty sum of Rs.54,000 for the seven-month-old bull. Years later, he named the bull Yograj, who, together with a milch buffalo named Ganga, did make Karamveer famous, as predicted. The two buffaloes changed Karamveer’s fate: from a young farmer tucked away in a nondescript corner of Haryana— albeit a prosperous farmer—he is today an avid businessman whose name has spread far and wide.

These days he receives visitors from across Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh almost daily. And in the past, offers for his buffaloes have come from distant places such as Venezuela and Thailand. Everyone, it seems, is eager to lay their hands on Karamveer’s buffaloes. Last year, Karamveer made Rs.75 lakh from selling the semen of his elite bulls. In February last year, he was offered a jaw-dropping Rs.7 crore for Yograj’s and Ganga’s offspring, a champion bull named Yuvraj.........click for more


Source: Live mint

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