India discards half its indigenous wool as demand declines and Deccani sheep disappear

Time of India

19 hours ago

Shear Neglect: India has the second-largest sheep population in the world, but 50% of indigenous wool is discarded. Deccani sheep, once reared in Tamil Nadu and part of the social fabric of farming communities, have almost vanished.
If the black sheep from the nursery rhyme were asked if it had wool to give today, it would bleat an indignant 'bah'. Not because it can no longer fill three bags full, but because it has no one to shear, store, bag, and sell the fibre. In the Indian context, the black sheep of the English rhyme could well be the Deccani, a breed native to the Deccan plateau, whose wool is predominantly the colour of coal.
The sheep starred in 'Desi Oon', a stop-motion film by Kerala-born director
Suresh Eriyat
and Studio Eeksaurus, which bagged multiple awards, most recently the Jury Award for Best Commissioned Film at the Annecy International
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Animation Festival, the gold standard in animation prizes.
Commissioned by the Centre for Pastoralism (CfP), a nonprofit established to revive India's flagging pastoral economies and vanishing social cultures, the film highlights how indigenous wool, once central to rural craft economies, is losing ground to imported and acrylic wool, even as pastoral routes are being subsumed by urbanisation, industry, public infrastructure, and solar farms.
According to the 20th Livestock Census (2019), Deccani sheep accounted for 3.4% of India's sheep population (43.9% were indigenous breeds).
In the 1972 census, they accounted for 12.7%. Baa Baa Black Sheep was a critique of medieval wool taxes that left English shepherds with little to sell. Eriyat's film, which signals the current plight of India's pastoralists, is an SOS in song.
In Tamil Nadu, the kambili, or woollen blanket, derived from Deccani sheep, was not just useful on cold nights but was also part of the social fabric of certain farming communities, says Sushma Iyengar, cofounder of CfP.
'Deccani wool is like sacred fibre for them.
It was used in birth and death ceremonies. At weddings, the couple sat on mats made of wool.' Sangam poetry mentions five 'thinais' or landscapes: Mullai (forest), palai (dryland), marutham (farmland), neythal (seashore), and kurunji (mountain), each with its distinct moods and metaphors. 'Palai refers to grassland, where shepherds grazed sheep and other animals. The state has a rich history of pastoralism,' she says.
'Lord Murugan is believed to have married a shepherdess.'
It's largely the nomadic tribe of the kurumba gounders who reared Deccani sheep in Tamil Nadu, moving their herds according to the seasons and in search of water sources, says P Vivekanandan, chair, International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Initiative. 'There are few who continue the profession. The only areas where one may find Deccani sheep in Tamil Nadu today are in Solur in Coimbatore district,' he says.
'For 70 years, Deccani wool was mostly used by the Indian railways for blankets and by the Indian army, but these have been replaced by synthetics,' says Sushma. Woolly breeds of Deccani sheep were replaced by mixed breeds that yielded more meat than wool.
It's not just Deccani wool that's dwindling. Today, nearly 50% of India's indigenous wool is discarded, despite the country having the second-largest sheep population in the world.
One reason is that desi wool (especially from the Deccan and western regions) is too coarse for standard textile mills, which prefer imported Merino-style wool.
Another is the absence of market linkages. 'Rajasthan's carpet industry, which was once the biggest absorber of desi wool, now finds it cheaper to buy containers of imported wool from Bikaner's wool mandi than go to villages looking for Pashupala (herders) and buy 1kg of fibre from one and five from another,' says Prerna Agarwal, cofounder of Samakhya Sustainable Alternatives, a social enterprise working on indigenous wool insulation for green built environment.
'Bikaner used to be Asia's largest wool mandi. Today, half of it is a sabzi mandi.'
Demand within the village has also fallen as clothes, tents, and household items once made from indigenous wool are now mass-produced. 'The craft sector helps preserve tradition but won't shift the needle in demand for wool,' says Rahul Noble Singh, strategic advisor to Desi Oon, an initiative launched by CfP to develop the indigenous wool economy.
'That's why we're focusing on industrial applications.' CfP has built a coalition of partners in the fields of design, commerce, research, and policy that are raising awareness about the potential of desi wool, developing prototypes of new products, and beating new paths to the market.
One such partner is Earthen Tunes, a Hyderabad-based footwear company founded in 2018 that produces wool-based footwear. The company set out to make shoes for farmers and explored 15 natural fibres before discovering Deccani wool.
'The other fibres did not do well in water,' says cofounder Santosh Kocherlakota. 'Then, someone told us about this magical blanket that worked well in the monsoons. We put it on a cofounder's head and when we poured water on it, it didn't go through!' It was the ghongadi, the traditional Deccani wool blanket that served as the shepherd's rug, canopy, and companion on his months-long migration.
Kocherlakota says though some weavers initially objected to using the blanket for footwear, they came around when told it would benefit farmers.
The company now sources about 500 blankets for each production run, with one blanket making four pairs of shoes. The company is now developing snake-bite-resistant boots and wool-based cheese packaging.
Once prototypes are tested, the next step is to build supply chains and get buyers, but that's not easy. 'If you invest in a supply chain without demand, it's wasted. But without supply, companies won't commit,' says Singh.
On the upside, funders are willing to invest if companies can demonstrate demand and prove the supply chain exists.
But that means starting with the sheep and improving the value chain to meet industrial standards. Historically considered low-value, desi wool saw little attention to cleaning, shearing, sorting, or storage.
In Rajasthan, for example, entire herds of up to 4,000 animals are dipped in the same trough due to water scarcity in the desert, says Agarwal.
To streamline the value chain, Samakhya has established decentralised processing units in Rajasthan's pastoral heartland employing local pastoral communities. CfP is working on a traceability system for indigenous wool that will 'map the journey of wool from pastoralist to processor'. Singh believes India has an opportunity to develop wool as a commodity. 'Not only for its magical properties, but for the kind of storytelling it offers, with its links to tradition, culture, and environment.
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Wool Worth
Wool is an ideal green material for construction, says the International Wool Textile Organisation, as it is flame-resistant, biodegradable, and regulates humidity. Trials by the Wool Research Association of their wool-based thermal insulation panels showed a 9°C drop in indoor temperatures. 'Our mulch mats, made from raw Deccani wool and plant nutrients, improved crop yield,' says Mrinal Choudhari, additional director and lead innovator of the project.