Talk:Dairy in India: Difference between revisions

Discussion on article improvements

I'm watching an interesting video on the industry. Some good pointers in it. Operation Flood seems to be a major moment in the industry, so we could could have a section on that. Zindor (talk) 01:56, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Just dropped in a bit on that :) AleatoryPonderings (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Great, thank you. I imagine you're already well ahead of the rest of us on drafting content for this. I'm excited by the scope of this article but it's also gone 3am here and i should really be sleeping. Apparently "India ranks first among the world’s milk producing Nations since 1998 and has the largest bovine population in the World.". Some facts like that would look sweet in the lede although it probably wouldn't do any harm if we checked a statement like that against other RS who are more inclined to be neutral on the subject. Zindor (talk) 02:23, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I believe there's scope for some content on dairy imports and exports. There's a USDA analysis here that among other things talks about an effective prohibition on U.S dairy products being imported into India because the animals involved in the process have been fed on other ruminants.

Until at least recently India had a ban on dairy products (and related downstream products like chocolate) from China. Source: here.

I'm sure i'm just scraping the surface of this. I'll try and get some prose put together but do let me know if you're already working on this and i'll dig elsewhere. Regards, Zindor (talk) 16:45, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Go ahead and add! I'm leaving the article be for the moment, I think, so feel free to drop in whatever; looks like SD0001 has also finished their current round of edits, so we can cede the floor to you :) AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:53, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time finding a source that covers offerings of milk in the practice of Hinduism, in a generic non-specific sense. I've found plenty of mentions about the Ganesha drinking milk miracle but i'd like to be able to make a blanket statement about milk offerings, or milk being poured on lingams etc.

This image from Commons shows what i'd like to explain in the article:

@Zindor: Agnihotra seems decently well-sourced—does that help at all? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 02:53, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, i'll look into it. Zindor (talk) 13:15, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Largest producer etc

@SD0001 and AleatoryPonderings: I've found a recent livemint article that makes the statement about being the largest producer and consumer, but i've also found this article by the Economic Times which makes a different comparison, and a similar parrot by LiveMint.

There seems to be two ways the sources are assessing this, comparing India against individual countries, or comparing India against conglomerates such as the European Union.

If we can find a source that states India is world leader, beating the EU, then that would cover the current wording of the DYK. Otherwise the wording would have to be similar to what we currently have in the lede. Zindor (talk) 13:15, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@Zindor: I just left a comment on the DYK nom (before I saw this): there's an FAO publication which says that India had a production of 186k tons in 2018, which is more than that of EU. The Economic Times and Livemint articles are interesting. Awkward since they're also citing a UN publication. SD0001 (talk) 13:24, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

@SD0001 and Zindor: Thanks SD0001 for handling the DYK. At a quick glance, something that could use clarification is: are we talking about milk or dairy (or maybe both)? If it's dairy, is there an agreed-upon international standard for what dairy is? It's kind of a vague category in ordinary language, but maybe there's something more specific in the industry. Like is there an ISO standard for "dairy production" or similar? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 13:48, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Cuisine

This article gives a nice overview on dairy in Indian cuisine, and is quite accurate from what I know. Too bad it's marked as "sponsored content", which probably means it can't be used as an RS. Anyway, it gives a lot of pointers on what keywords to search for. SD0001 (talk) 14:23, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 19:55, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that the dairy industry in India is the largest in the world? Source: "India currently has the highest level of milk production and overall consumption of all countries" Making Milk: The Past, Present and Future of Our Primary Food

• Reviewed: Did you know nominations/Supplied-air respirator
• Comment: cc AleatoryPonderings, Zindor

5x expanded by AleatoryPonderings (talk), SD0001 (talk), Naushervan (talk) and Zindor (talk). Nominated by SD0001 (talk) at 15:09, 21 August 2020 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Regards, Jeromi Mikhael ^(marhata) 05:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

@Jeromi Mikhael: I think I was QPQ-exempt but now done anyway. SD0001 (talk) 05:09, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Regards, Jeromi Mikhael ^(marhata) 05:12, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I came by for a check. There is still a citation needed tag on the article which needs to be addressed. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 11:50, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

The reference also may not reflect up-to-date information. It dates back to 2017, quite a while ago from 2020. @SD0001:, @Zindor:, @AleatoryPonderings: any fix is much appreciated. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 12:05, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Vincent60030, This source on page 8 (cite added to article) shows India as leading with 186k tons in 2018. Next comes the US with 98k tons. I don't think we have an RS which is more current but given the huge gap in the figures between India and US, I think it's safe to assume that the fact is correct.

Also resolved the citation needed tag. SD0001 (talk) 13:15, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Alright, restoring tick. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 14:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

• Comment. Not that DYK is ever starved for articles with images, but as this is (IMO) a very interesting hook, perhaps an image would be warranted. Two excellent ones I found are File:Cow and its calf.jpg (currently in the lede) and File:20191207 Krowa nad Jeziorem Pichola w Udajpurze 1509 7245 DxO.jpg (further down in the article, and rated a quality image on Commons). AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:27, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Possible alternative hooks, if any if these images look good to the promoter, are:

• ALT1: ... that the dairy industry in India (cow pictured) is the largest in the world? (for File:20191207 Krowa nad Jeziorem Pichola w Udajpurze 1509 7245 DxO.jpg)
• ALT2: ... that the dairy industry in India (ancient cow sculpture pictured) is the largest in the world? (for File:20191207 Krowa nad Jeziorem Pichola w Udajpurze 1509 7245 DxO.jpg)

@AleatoryPonderings: How about picturing a water buffalo instead? That'd be more representative of dairy in India. I found File:Water buffalo calf, India.jpg particularly sweet.

Water buffalo calf, India

Possible revision to the hook to factor in the image:

• ALT3: ... that the dairy industry in India, which is the largest in the world, is largely reliant on buffalo milk (calf pictured)?

SD0001 (talk) 16:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

No quarrel from me! Just thought we should consider adding some sort of pic to this, given the hookiness of the hook and importance of the topic. I leave to others which (if any) pic should be used. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Added DYK credit to Naushervan per authorship stats. SD0001 (talk) 12:56, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

• Is someone going to approve the alt hooks or the image? Vincent60030? Yoninah (talk) 22:23, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you for the ping. I'll give approval to ALT3 since ALT1 and ALT2 are unsuitable. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 09:52, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Vincent60030: I agree with you that ALT3 is the best option. But the sentence verifying the hook fact does not have an inline cite, and the image does not appear in the article. Yoninah (talk) 10:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: Hmm, I have AGFed on the inline source, which appeared in the next sentence which I assume cited this sentence. But yes I do agree that the picture needs to be in the article now that I thought. @SD0001: @AleatoryPonderings: need somemore input for the ALT3 issues and of course the fixings. Thank you! Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 10:53, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Vincent60030: the inline cite must appear no later than the end of the sentence(s) offering that fact per WP:DYK#Cited hook b. And the image must appear in the article per WP:DYK#Image 3. The image licensing must be checked before applying an approval tick. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 10:57, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

@Vincent60030 and SD0001: I've just added a citation for the claim that water buffalo milk is important, and emailed Yann, who took the picture, as they request on the file page. It is licensed as CC-BY-SA and under the GNU FDL, which I assume is sufficient? We may need to rework the alt hook a bit, since it's somewhat general at the moment and therefore difficult to cite unambiguously. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 13:41, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

For some more specificity in the hook, I propose:

Water buffalo calf, Raisen

• ALT3a: ... that almost half the milk produced in India, whose dairy industry is the largest in the world, comes from water buffaloes (calf pictured)? Sources for buffalo claim: [1] (graph on page 9 of the PDF—thanks Zindor), [2], [3] (page 82); source for "largest in the world" claim (per above): [4] (page 8)
  

Also, Yann just got back to me via email with an OK for the image, so we're good there I think—it's licensed CC-BY-SA and GFDL. One potential snag is the species—some of the sources cited above do not say "water buffalo" in particular (although that's presumably what's meant), so we could also go with

• ALT3b: ... that almostnearly half the milk produced in India, whose dairy industry is the largest in the world, comes from buffaloes (calf pictured)?
  

AleatoryPonderings (talk) 18:21, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• Image licensing looks good and is in the article (clear as well), sources are backed for ALT3b so we'll go with that. Good to go. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 09:34, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

• ALT3c: ... that buffaloes (calf pictured) produce about 50 percent of the milk in India, whose dairy industry is the largest in the world?

Sorry, everyone (in particular @Vincent60030, Yoninah, and SD0001); I saw that [5] looked a little too close for my comfort to the wording of Alt3b, so I've rephrased. I think this last alt—alt3c—should do it, with the buffalo pic. I also wikilinked milk and India (generic topics usually, but relevant here). Really sorry for dragging this process out—did not mean to inconvenience everyone so much. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 15:17, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

• @AleatoryPonderings: I disagree. We're trying to get you an image slot but ALT3c is too wordy and sounds like a news report. ALTb is a much better hook. Yoninah (talk) 21:07, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• Yoninah, Thanks for your reply. If the paragraph just below the headline in [6] does not look too close in wording to Alt3b to you, I'm good with Alt3b as well. I have de-struck it per your note. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 21:11, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• No problem per WP:LIMITED. And we'll change "almost" to "nearly" for good measure. Restoring tick per Vincent60030's review. Yoninah (talk) 21:14, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• @AleatoryPonderings: Errgh. The photo is freely licensed but with a copyright notice. What is going on here? Yoninah (talk) 21:18, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: I'm a little out of my depth here. It appears to be licenced under the GFDL, which if I'm looking at it correctly is the same licence that File:Estatua rey Fernando III de Castilla-ret.jpg, the file for today's photo DYK, also uses. Are you referring to … you are requested to use the following next to the image if you reuse this file: © Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA on the photo description page at Commons? If so, I can email Yann again and ask if it's ok for us to forgo that attribution this time. Otherwise, I think we'll either have to find another photo (which would be a big pain for everyone, I'm sure) or abandon the photo slot. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 21:26, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

• @AleatoryPonderings: Yes, I'm referring to the Commons page. What I've seen in many other cases is a request by the photographer to credit him for use of the pictures, but never a copyright tag. Yoninah (talk) 21:28, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

@Yoninah: I just emailed Yann again to clarify about the copyright notice. Will ping you here once I hear back. Apologies, once again, for all the back-and-forth on this—I certainly don't mean to inconvenience you. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 21:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
@Yoninah: I haven't heard back from Yann and I'm reluctant to bother them yet again about the image. I found an alternative—which, IMO, is even more visually striking. It is unambiguously licenced CC-BY-SA 4.0 International. If this is acceptable, I suggest we use this image instead, with the slightly modified hook (ALT3bv2) below. (I just removed "calf" in the "pictured" section since I'm not sure if this is a picture of a calf or not, and altered the caption to conform to where this alternative picture was taken). If not, File:09963 Water buffalo.JPG is also a possibility, but it looks as if it should be cropped before going on the main page and I'm reluctant to do that to an image that's already rated a quality image on Commons. If neither of these options work, I think it's probably best just to abandon the picture slot. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 18:06, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Water buffalo, Payvihir

• ALT3bv2: ... that nearly half the milk produced in India, whose dairy industry is the largest in the world, comes from buffaloes (water buffalo pictured)?

• @AleatoryPonderings: Well, this image isn't so striking. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if "buffalo" should be substituted for water buffalo in the hook and article? Yoninah (talk) 18:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: We've gone back and forth on the "buffalo"/"water buffalo" question. Most of the sources—e.g., [7] (page 9 of the PDF), our best source—only say "buffalo", even though it's pretty clear that "water buffalo" is meant. I'm not even sure there is any other kind of milk-producing buffalo in India than water buffalo. But strictly speaking I think "buffalo" is the only source-supported statement. As for the image, I leave it up to you. I am happy to crop File:09963 Water buffalo.JPG, if you think that's better; I just don't want to disrupt the file history on Commons (not super sure how things work there). AleatoryPonderings (talk) 18:18, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• @AleatoryPonderings: Sorry, I just find it confusing to say comes from buffaloes and then put water buffalo in the caption. To an American, buffalo means buffalo, not water buffalo. Let's just run without the image. Yoninah (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Yoninah: Fair enough—seems like the simplest solution. At least now we've found some more beautiful buffalo pics to put in the article :) AleatoryPonderings (talk) 19:44, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Pic?

A high-quality pic would be great for the lede, but I've had trouble finding one. The one here is really good, but there's very little information about it. The Flickr page says it's in Tamil Nadu, but that's not super helpful … Any thoughts? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

It would be nice to have an image like that in the lede, representing the significant amount of smallholder dairy producers. In regards to that particular image, we'd have to obtain a copyright release from the image owner, and there is perhaps an issue in regards to safeguarding. The two LPs feature quite prominently in the image and i was able to run the number plate of the tractor through the public database and get the owner's name and the general area. Regards, Zindor (talk) 16:15, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Woah, that's some excellent sleuthing! In the meantime I put some other pics in the article—mostly just added the prettiest pictures of cow-related things I could find …… AleatoryPonderings (talk) 16:18, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

They are great pictures. The lede one from the LACMA museum in particular. I wish someone had told me that museum existed, i used to live in that neck of the woods and would have definitely visited. Zindor (talk) 16:49, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Water buffalo milk

@Zindor, SD0001, and Naushervan: This was probably my fault for being overeager to get a pic on the main page for this article, but it looks like the DYK for this article will be talking about water buffalo milk production. I just did a bit of research and it seems like we were relying on some outdated statistics when we first updated this article. As of the most recent round of agricultural statistics, it looks like milk from cows now just overtakes milk from water buffalo in terms of volume per year. I've now added some decent citations to that effect, but I would really like to find some official government statistics detailing the volume of milk from different sources. So I had two questions for you all:

1. Do you know where to find official versions of those statistics/if they're publicly available? I only found secondary reports.
2. Do you think the current hook on the DYK, which currently reads " … that the dairy industry in India, which is the largest in the world, is largely reliant on buffalo milk?", needs to be tweaked to account for the new state of affairs, in which cow milk is actually (just barely) the majority of milk produced? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 14:26, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I might change the hook to something like " … that just under half of the milk produced in India, whose dairy industry is the largest in the world, comes from water buffaloes"? AleatoryPonderings (talk) 14:48, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

The 3rd page (Page 9 on PDF) of this annual report by the DADF has a table and piechart detailing the percentage milk contribution by the various types of animal. The data is from 2017-18 but it's the latest report i can find on that site. Zindor (talk) 17:04, 3 September 2020 (UTC)