Bubalus bubalis, one of the most important animals of Asia, makes a contribution to food supplies both directly, when its milk is used or it is eaten as meat, and indirectly because of its role as a draught animal in agriculture. Its world population in the 1980s was estimated to be over 130 million.
There are two general types, the swamp buffalo and the river buffalo. The former is found from the Philippines to as far west as India and is primarily a work animal; it is also used for meat but almost never for milk. The river buffaloes are found further west from India to Egypt and the Balkans, even to Italy. They supply well over half of India's milk and their butterfat is the major source of ghee. In Pakistan in 1996, 71 per cent of the national milk productionn and 49 per cent of its meat was from the water-buffalo.
The meat of the water-buffalo—at least of animals bred for the purpose—is fully comparable with beef. In one respect it is superior; the water-buffalo has a more efficient digestive system than cattle and can extract nourishment from coarser forage, so is a better ‘converter’ of vegetable matter into animal protein. However, where water-buffalo farming has been introduced (for example England from 1991 and the USA from the 1980s), meat sales are of less importance than milk. Even in countries like Turkey, where the animal has a longer history, the meat is only sold for sausages.
Water-buffalo milk has a higher content of both butterfat and non-fat solids than cow's, and is often in greater demand and more expensive for that reason. Whereas 8 kg (17 lb) of cow's milk is normally needed to produce 1 kg (2 lb) of cheese, 5 kg of water-buffalo milk would be sufficient. Its milk (which lacks the yellow pigment carotene which is in cow's milk) produces pure white soft cheeses, of which mozzarella cheese is the best known—but there are many others in the Balkans and the Near East; and is the preferred milk for making kaymak.
The whole subject of water-buffaloes, their distribution and use in the various countries where they are to be found, and the possibility of increasing the already substantial debt of human kind to these animals has been particularly well explored by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in publications which include several by the world authority W. Ross Cockrill.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
