How a warming Pacific Ocean thousands of kilometres away can raise the price of the milk in your kitchen.
India is the world’s largest milk producer, and dairy is not a side business for this country, it is a way of life for tens of millions of households. Over 80 million farmers, many of them smallholders with just two or three animals tied up in the backyard, depend on the daily sale of milk for cash income. So when scientists start talking about something called El Niño, a phenomenon that sounds like it belongs in an oceanography textbook, it is worth asking a very practical question: what does this actually do to the cow in someone’s courtyard in Haryana or the buffalo wading through a pond in Andhra Pradesh?
First, What Exactly Is El Niño?
El Niño is a natural climate pattern that begins far from India, in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Every few years, surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific warm up more than usual. This shift changes wind and pressure patterns across the globe, and one of its most well-documented side effects is a weakening of India’s southwest monsoon, the rains that arrive between June and September and that the entire agricultural calendar is built around.
As of mid-2026, this is not a hypothetical scenario. El Niño conditions have already begun developing over the Pacific, and the IMD has forecast below-normal monsoon rainfall for the season, with international forecasting agencies estimating a very high probability of strong El Niño conditions persisting through the second half of the year. Early data has already shown rainfall running well below normal in the opening weeks of the season across central, western and southern India, even as the northeast has fared better. In other words, this is a live, unfolding situation, not a distant possibility.
The Two-Pronged Attack: Heat and Drought
El Niño does not hurt dairy farming through a single mechanism. It works on two fronts at once, and both happen to be especially damaging for cattle and buffaloes.
1. The Heat Comes First
Long before the monsoon clouds are even due, El Niño years tend to bring intense pre-monsoon heatwaves. This is the less-discussed half of the story; most conversations about El Niño jump straight to rainfall, but the heat arrives earlier and hits harder than people expect.
Dairy animals are remarkably sensitive to heat. Veterinary researchers measure this using something called the Temperature-Humidity Index, or THI, which combines air temperature and humidity into a single comfort score for livestock. Once THI crosses a threshold of around 72, a level that is now common across large parts of north and central India during summer, cows and buffaloes begin to show clear signs of physiological strain: faster breathing, elevated heart rate, and reduced feeding.
Scientists at the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal explain the chain reaction simply: heat stress reduces how much an animal eats, and that lost energy gets diverted away from both milk production and reproduction. High-yielding animals, ironically the most valuable ones to a farmer, are hit hardest because their bodies already generate more internal heat through their own metabolism.
The consequences go beyond a temporary dip in the milk can. Veterinary studies have linked sustained heat stress to lower milk fat content (which matters directly to farmer income, since milk is priced partly on its fat and solids content), reduced fertility, a higher rate of miscarriages, and in some documented cases, premature and underweight calves.
The scale of this is no longer a matter of guesswork. The Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute estimated in 2022 that rising temperatures could shrink annual milk production in India’s northern plains, a region responsible for close to a third of the country’s milk, by 361,000 tonnes by 2039, translating into losses of nearly ₹1,193 crore. Separately, NDRI scientists have warned that milk output in parts of north India could fall by close to 20 percent if heat-mitigation measures are not adopted quickly enough.
2. Then the Rain Doesn’t Come
The second blow lands once the monsoon itself underperforms. About half of India’s farmland depends on rainfall rather than irrigation, making the dairy sector closely tied to monsoon performance. But the connection is more complex than simply “less rain means less fodder.”
Most dairy animals in India are not fed primarily on dedicated fodder crops. A large share of their diet comes from crop residues such as wheat straw, rice straw, and other stalks left behind after harvesting food grains. Common grazing lands and pastures also play a significant role, while dedicated fodder crops account for a smaller portion of the overall feed system.
When El Niño weakens the monsoon, these multiple feed sources come under pressure simultaneously. Poor rainfall can reduce yields of food-grain crops, leaving behind less straw and crop residue for livestock. Drought conditions also limit grass growth on grazing lands and pastures, shrinking another important source of feed. Dedicated fodder crops such as fodder maize and sorghum can also be affected, particularly in rainfed regions.
For dairy farmers, the result is often the same: feed becomes scarcer and more expensive. Farmers may have to pay higher prices for fodder and feed ingredients or reduce feed quality and quantity, both of which can lower milk yields. In this way, El Niño amplifies a challenge that already exists. India faces a persistent fodder deficit even in normal years, and weak monsoons tend to widen that gap further.
Livestock, including dairy animals, are often viewed as a source of financial stability for farming households when crop income becomes uncertain. However, when El Niño affects both crop production and livestock feed availability at the same time, that safety net becomes less reliable. Families may face lower crop output, higher feed costs, and reduced milk production simultaneously, putting greater pressure on rural incomes.
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Who Feels This the Most
Not every dairy farmer experiences El Niño in the same way, and that unevenness is itself an important part of the story.
- Smallholders bear a disproportionate burden. The dairy economy in India runs on millions of farms with just two to five animals each. These households typically lack the savings to invest in cooling sheds, water systems, or buying expensive supplementary feed when fodder prices spike.
- High-yield crossbred cattle and buffaloes are more vulnerable than hardier indigenous breeds. India’s dairy productivity gains over the last two decades have come substantially from crossbreeding with high-yielding international breeds, but these animals also tend to have lower natural heat tolerance, creating a genuine tension between productivity and climate resilience.
- Rain-fed regions of central, western, and northwestern India face the steepest fodder shortfalls, since these are the areas most exposed to monsoon failure and least cushioned by groundwater irrigation.
- Women, who make up a large share of those directly involved in milking, fodder collection, and animal care in rural India, often absorb the added physical burden of fetching water and fodder over longer distances when local supplies dry up.
What the Numbers Tell Us About the Ripple Effects
Economists studying India’s food inflation have already linked recent stretches of erratic rainfall, partly attributable to El Niño-influenced weather patterns, to higher feed and cereal-bran costs, which squeeze dairy farmers’ margins from the input side, even before any drop in milk yield. The Reserve Bank of India’s own inflation projections have flagged the fourth quarter of the calendar year, when the cumulative effect of a weak monsoon usually shows up most clearly in food prices, as a particular point of concern in El Niño years.
There is also a longer tail to this story. A Reserve Bank of India study examining the 2015-16 super El Niño event found that rural wages stayed subdued well after agricultural growth itself had recovered. That is an important nuance: the economic scars of a bad El Niño year do not necessarily heal as quickly as the weather does.
So What Can We Actually Do About It?
The encouraging part of this story is that none of these impacts are unmanageable. Indian veterinary scientists, government agencies, and dairy companies have already built a meaningful toolkit, some of it low-cost and immediately usable by any farmer, some of it requiring longer-term investment. Here is what genuinely helps.
On the Farm: Keeping Animals Cool and Fed
- Shade and water, the simplest interventions, are also among the most effective. Studies of farmer practices in regions like eastern Uttar Pradesh have found that something as basic as providing extra drinking water and an additional bath or shower for animals during summer meaningfully reduces heat stress, at very low cost.
- Better shed design and ventilation matter enormously. ICAR-NDRI scientists have even tested a geothermal ventilation system using buried pipes that lowered shed temperatures by close to 11°C in peak summer without burning any fuel. Simpler versions of the same principle, like improved roofing, cross-ventilation, and tarpaulin covers, are already being adopted by farmers who can afford the upfront cost.
- Feeding schedules can be adjusted around the heat. Shifting the bulk of feeding to the cooler hours of early morning and evening, rather than the heat of midday, helps animals maintain intake levels that would otherwise drop sharply.
- Breeding for resilience is a longer-term but powerful lever. NDRI has already developed and registered a heat-resilient cattle breed designed to hold up its milk yield under hotter conditions. Indigenous Bos indicus breeds, which make up the large majority of India’s cattle population, are also naturally more heat-tolerant than imported breeds, and there’s a strong case for valuing that trait more highly in breeding programmes rather than treating it as a productivity trade-off.
At the Policy and Industry Level
- Fodder security needs to move from emergency response to standing infrastructure. Community fodder banks, fodder cultivation on wasteland under schemes like the National Livestock Mission, and stronger fodder-processing capacity all reduce how badly a single bad monsoon can hurt supply.
- Livestock insurance remains underused relative to its value. Research on climate adaptation among livestock farmers has found that scaling up insurance coverage is one of the clearest ways to give farmers a financial cushion against exactly this kind of climate shock, yet uptake still lags well behind potential need, especially among smallholders.
- Climate information services genuinely change farmer behaviour for the better. Studies have shown that farmers who receive timely seasonal and weather advisories are more likely to take protective steps in advance, such as preserving fodder stocks or relocating animals, rather than scrambling once a shock has already hit.
- Government schemes are actively being expanded to address this. The revised Rashtriya Gokul Mission and National Livestock Mission both now carry components aimed squarely at climate resilience, including breed improvement, fodder development on degraded land, and support for mobile veterinary care that can respond quickly in high heat environments.
The Takeaway
El Niño is, in the words of one researcher tracking its effects on Indian agriculture, less a disease in itself and more a symptom of a broader pattern of climate volatility that India’s farmers will likely keep encountering with increasing frequency. The good news is that the dairy sector is not starting from zero. Decades of veterinary research have produced a genuinely useful set of tools, from something as simple as a daily bucket of cool water to something as sophisticated as geothermal shed cooling and heat-resilient breeding programmes.
What stands between these tools and the millions of small farmers who need them is largely a question of access, awareness, and affordability. Closing that gap, through extension services, insurance, fodder infrastructure, and continued investment in climate-smart breeding, is not just good agricultural policy. For a country that produces a quarter of the world’s milk and where tens of millions of families depend on that white liquid in the morning pail, it is a matter of food security and rural livelihoods alike.
Looking to make your dairy operation more resilient to heat, drought, and changing weather patterns? Contact Chadha Sales for expert guidance on climate-smart dairy infrastructure and processing solutions.