One of the arguments by the cow-slaughter protagonists is that when man does not get food from where to feed the cow? Conversely, feed cows and keep them alive and allow men to starve and to die. This argument is clearly misleading and false for the fact that men do not eat grass and cows do not eat rice, dal and chapattis. Obviously men’s food interests do not clash with that of the cow. We grow Jowar and Bajri and men eat grain while cows its kadab (decapitated stalk). Our food interests are interdependent and correlated. The root of our food shortage is in the cow shortage. We have seen that if the cow is not there how adversely, to the disastrous limit our commerce and industry, our agriculture and health are affected.

The difficulty experienced in feeding cows is due to the fact that our agriculture is industry-oriented and not food oriented, which means that instead of meeting human needs, the agricultural priorities are made to serve industrial needs. For example, groundnut is sown in 2.40 crores of acres, yielding 16 lakh tons of oil. To get, this 16 lakh tons of oil the sowing needs only 60 lakh acres. But the oil cannot be converted into vegetable ghee. Therefore, the is neglected by the farmer because the industrial consumer, the vanaspati ghee manufacturer would not buy this, as also the farmer is encouraged by the Government to produce groundnut. In fact the sowing would not only create a surplus of 1 .8 crore acres of land for food grains, amounting to 45 lakh tons of excess food, but would benefit soil, it not being deteriorated as in the case of groundnut cultivation. Further, the-oil-cake is the best food for cattle. In India rice eaters are about 16 crores as against 32 crores of wheat eaters. For this wheat eating population 8 crores tons of wheat plus a further stock of 3 crores tons for famine and war contingencies, totaling to 11 crores of tons has to be provided for. To meet this tonnage, 16 crores acres have to be under wheat (our present land under cultivation cover 40 crore acres). There is no alternative but to achieve the target. Huge dams and fertilizer factories have, instead of helping towards this target, actually retarded the progress. Therefore 16cr. acres should be allotted for wheat sowing only. Of these 32 crores wheat-eaters about 6 crore are Jowar eaters, 3 crore Bajri eaters and 5 crore maize eaters. Now jowar, bajri and maize are kharitf crops while wheat is a Rabbi crop. Khariff crops will yield 5 crore tons of food grains along with 140 crore tons of kadab (stalks). Immediately on harvesting kharif crops gadab should be sown yielding
100 cr. tons. This gadab is also a good fodder and dried gadab is a good fertilizer. The same land can then be utilized for wheat sowing, yielding 5 crores tons of wheat.

Sixty-three crores cows will need 175 crore tons of grass and sowing jowar and bajri only we get a grass yield in excess of this need. Further by developing graze fallow lands an additional 100-150 crore tons of grass can be made available. If the people’s need of one ounce edible oil is met 6.25 crore tons of oil-cake would be available. Twenty-six Iakh tons of cotton seed is produced, lakhs of tons of jowar is produced and having procured sufficient manure and bullock supply for farming our food grain production would rise threefold. With such huge food production the cattle fodder does not remain a problem at all. As a matter of fact we would have fodder in surplus. Along with this, because of superior quality, world markets would willingly pay higher prices for our food grains. To achieve this, first of all vegetable ghee production should be totally banned. On our agriculture, cattle and the social economy vegetable ghee has deadlier effect than even atom bombs.

AICC held in Ahmedabad under the president of Late Shri Purshottamdas Tandon passed a resolution to ban completely production, sales, imports and exports of vegetable ghee. This step was in the right direction but for whatever reasons it was never enforced.
The figures above should satisfy the reader that cattle feeding is not a problem at all for us but if we do not completely stop the slaughter of the cow progeny our already difficult food problem would aggravate into the question ‘What will men eat?’ and our rulers will recommend meat and fish eating duly supported by foreign experts; inspite of the fact that fish diet accelerates population growth.

Today we have only two alternatives: Prosper through propagation and development and improvement of cattle, OR destroy cattle and perish ourselves.