**2. Innovation needs**

Though developing countries like India contribute above half in world milk pail, productivity per animal is poor compared to other countries. The huge production is purely number driven rather than productivity achievement. This leads to over exploitation of resources and more waste production particularly manure, which is really harmful to the planet looking towards environmental concerns. Low animal productivity might be a result of ineffective breeding, improper feed and fodder management, deficient veterinary care, poor farm management etc. Dairy farmer has to improve the amount of milk each animal produces, thereby reducing the amount of feed, water and space needed per liter of milk resulting in less manure production. This provides a big window for different innovation application to enhance productivity in such developing nations where majority dairy farms are small scale and managed on traditional practices. It is well recognized that sustainability—in its economic, social and ecological dimensions - in milk production vary across different dairy systems categorized on the basis of relevant socio-economic and farm characteristics of milk producing households. However, the sustainability studies concluded that market oriented farms with a high degree of technology adoption was the most economically, socially and ecologically sustainable farms.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Dairy farming issues, innovations and lab to land approaches.*

Technology adoption is associated with better milk yield and improved dairying is directly correlated with higher technology adoption, showing direct impact on income generation, poverty alleviation and animal protein availability [11] thus, to raise the milk production, improved animal husbandry techniques should be adopted in the small house hold dairy farms. To overcome the present challenges of this sector, technological innovations as well as ability to transfer these innovations from lab to field in dairy farming system is mandatory for achieving expected animal productivity, and lowering down the cost of production for greater economic returns to the farmers. The various dairy farming innovations addressed for sustainable dairy production are broadly discussed in this chapter. Various dairy farming issues, animal ailments along with dairy farming innovations and various lab to land approaches are presented jointly in **Figure 1**.
