India’s Protein Demand Will Shift Toward Dairy by 2070
India’s per-capita protein consumption is projected to more than triple between 2025 and 2070, rising from 9.5kg a year to 30kg. The projection is associated with higher household incomes, urbanisation, population growth and changing dietary preferences. Dairy is expected to remain central to the increase because it is already the country’s largest source of animal protein and India’s food culture is predominantly vegetarian.
Protein obtained from milk is forecast to rise from less than 5m tonnes in 2025 to 13.3m tonnes in 2070. That increase would exceed the combined growth projected for poultry, commercially produced eggs and aquaculture. Annual per-person milk-protein consumption, which stood at 1.63kg in 1990, is projected to reach 13.1kg by 2070. The latter figure is above the moderate-intake benchmarks used in international planetary-health nutrition models.
The expansion would take place alongside higher emissions from protein supply chains. Annual emissions from those chains could reach 1.92 gigatonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent by 2070, compared with estimated climate-aligned thresholds of 0.25 gigatonnes. Consumption of legumes and pulses is also projected to grow, but dairy’s carbon intensity and methane emissions remain significant elements of the agricultural emissions profile.
India currently produces about 248m tonnes of liquid milk each year. Most of that output comes from smallholder households keeping two or three milking animals. National milk production increased by 63.6% in the decade to 2024, while bovine productivity rose by 27.4%. The sector nonetheless faces seasonal shortages of feed, uneven access to veterinary services and high methane emissions per animal.
The projected rise in demand has put attention on changes to production and distribution systems. Agribusiness groups, research institutes and policymakers are examining genetic improvement, balanced feed rations and additives intended to reduce methane emissions. The stated objective is to improve productivity while maintaining the incomes of smallholder farmers.
India also imports almost 90% of the plant-protein isolates it requires. Expanding domestic processing of those products and increasing the use of agricultural biogas systems are among the measures identified for the country’s dairy and wider protein supply chains. Agriculture currently accounts for about 14% of India’s greenhouse-gas emissions, with livestock responsible for more than half of that total.
