Silage is often seen as a safety net for farmers — a way to store feed in bulk and ensure green fodder access during dry months. Many farmers invest in hybrid maize, harvest it at the right stage, chop and ferment it, and then stack it in pits or wrap it in polythene to make silage.

But here’s the catch: most farmers don’t calculate the real cost of making silage. Or any cost at all! Since they use part of their own land and the effort of members of the family, opportunity cost of which are not fully understood by the farmers, most farmers tend to believe the cost of silage is much lesser than the actual cost that they incur.

Due to the larger gestation period of the process and the longer period benefit that they experience from a point-of-time effort, many of the cost heads seem to fade out of consideration. And since silage is a lifeline for many farmers during the harsh summer months, this misnomer has cemented its place in the farmers’ minds and silage has started to become an integral part of their lives.

Let’s Break Down the Process of Silage Making

1. Cultivation – Buying hybrid seeds, preparing the land, applying fertilizers and pesticides, irrigation
2. Harvesting & Chaffing – Manual labor, diesel cost for machinery, chopping the material
3. Fermentation – Packing the chopped forage tightly to ensure anaerobic fermentation, sealing, and storing properly
4. Spoilage – If done incorrectly, fermentation goes wrong and the silage gets spoiled — leading to waste or even harmful feed

So what would be the Cost of Silage?

Often ₹6–10 per kg when all inputs are accounted for. Add labor, risk of spoilage (up to 25% in poor setups), and storage losses — and this becomes an expensive feed.

The Silage Fallacy

Because the costs are scattered across time and labor, farmers often think of silage as ‘free’ or low-cost. But the economic reality tells another story. Poor-quality silage can also cause health issues like Acidosis, Bloating, Loss of appetite, Reproductive failure, etc which are further cost hits for the farmer.

During a recent visit across the rural heartland of Marathwada in Maharashtra, we met farmers who had made Silage an integral part of their livestock nutrition. However, some of them had started outsourcing the silage creation to other farmers who had spare land and that is when the cost economics of Silage started to hit home.

No longer was the Silage Free but the farmers could now attribute a firm Rs. 6-8 per kg value and realised that the cost of feed was high! Add to that the propensity to supplement with nutritional supplement and concentrate pellets and their margins on milk seemed to be very thin.

Why Shunya’s Nutri Ankurit Feed can be a potent solution?

Nutri Ankurit Feed:

• Grown daily at scale; every farmer does not need to grow it separately
• Requires no land or weather dependency
• Always fresh, clean, and nutrient-rich; adds value to milk income
• With Shunya’s subscription model, there is predictability of supply even in dry months

No silage pits, no spoilage risks, no toxin worries. Just consistent, nutritious, clean feed — available on demand.

In dairy farming, input consistency drives output predictability. And nothing ensures that like hydroponic feed grown under controlled, smart systems used by Shunya.

Let’s stop mistaking convenience for cost-effectiveness. Silage has hidden costs. Nutri Ankurit Feed has visible results.

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