Bhubaneswar: A young entrepreneur from the city has launched corn silage, a beneficial fodder solution for cows, under the banner Odisha Silage with an aim to boost the dairy industry in the state.

Corn silage is a high-quality fermented forage crop, which is used in many dairy farms across the world. Its popularity is due to the high yield of a digestible, high-energy forage and the ease of adapting it to mechanised harvesting and feeding.

Anant Basudev, a 31-year entrepreneur, started his model dairy farm in Koraput in 2012. "When we started we had 20 cows in the farm but gradually we expanded to 100. But it was difficult to get the fodder. We began to look for alternatives for more than three years and it was a huge challenge. During the process we realised that bigger commercial farms across the world used corn silage as fodder," Basudev said.

The dairy farm members started procuring corn silage from Punjab and Andhra Pradesh but due to heavy demand of the product in that area it was not available regularly. Moreover, the transportation cost added up to the prices. The production unit of the high-quality fodder has been set up in Nabarangpur district, a prominent corn market in the state. This is the first corn silage plant in the state. The plant has the capacity to produce around 40, 000 metric tonnes of corn silage annually that can feed 20, 000 cows daily for a year.