Milk campaign churns out profit

Rekha and her mates from Postompur village sell their produce to a milk collector at a designated place in the village. The bottom picture shows a man collecting milk in a carrier for ease of transport. Photo: Sohel Parvez/pab

Forty-year-old Zulekha Begum has now mastered the art of whipping up a well-balanced feed. She uses various items such as husks of wheat and pulses, oil cakes, dark molasses, and salt to prepare the feed for cattle to increase milk yield.
Like Zulekha, Arjina, Rekha and many other women in 26 villages in Birampur upazila of Dinajpur, 400km northwest of Dhaka, also know how to care for and feed cows to ensure higher yield of milk and -- earn more.
Farida Yasmin and her mates in Chakbahanta Nalkura village are now taking lessons on cattle rearing from a village-level veterinary doctor, Mahinur Islam. He has formed a new milk producers group, inspired by the increased earnings of his colleagues.
“In the past, I usually got one call a day to treat ailing cows in the village. But now I receive at least five calls a day. Forming such a group and providing training have enabled me to increase my earnings,” said the village level veterinary doctor or 'paravet'.
A paravet is a community veterinarian who is not certified but is responsible for providing animal health care and animal production advice to people in their communities.
Islam trains the women in cattle rearing for free with an aim to profit from people's increased awareness. In other words, people will come to him with queries regarding cow rearing and his consultation practices will increase his earnings.
The total number of producers' groups in Birampur upazila now stands at 29, including the group trained by Islam.
Paravets voluntarily formed 14 and the remaining 15 were formed with assistance from a non-government organisation Practical Action Bangladesh (PAB), which started intervening in the milk pocket of Dinajpur district to aim at developing an integrated marketing system under one of its projects titled 'Cold Milk for Hot Profits.'
Dairy industry stakeholders said the formation of such milk producers' associations and bestowing training on fodder could help milk processors, especially the liquid milk processors who are hunting for new milk hubs to meet the high demands for liquid milk, mainly in the urban areas.
Official estimates show that milk production stood at 2.28 million tonnes in fiscal 2006-07, up 0.44 percent from 2.27 million tonnes from a year ago.
However, four liquid milk processors -- Milk Vita, BRAC, Akij and Rangpur Dairy -- manage to process about 70 million litres a year against the total processing capacity of about 140 million litres.
In Birampur and Dinajpur Sadar upazila, apart from the 29 groups, a majority of the farmers are producing milk on a commercial basis and are engaged in rearing cows to supplement their income.
But most farmers are not able to pocket the gains due to a lack of an integrated marketing system that involves all the stakeholders of the milk industry, according to PAB.
“Our aim is to play a supportive role in creating a sustainable community based on an integrated milk marketing system, which will create a win-win situation for all stakeholders and take the milk industry a step ahead,” said Mirza Kholil Zibran, senior regional officer of PAB, which had initially targeted 300 dairy farmers, some paravets, milking-people, and other players, to build an integrated system.
Such initiatives proved successful as 11 milkmen are collecting milk at certain designated points and at higher prices from these milk producers' groups from these 29 associations by using lactometers to examine the quality of milk.
Earlier, milk producers usually had to travel to distant markets to sell their produce at lower prices, as there had been mistrust between the two groups in the absence of any testing instrument such as the lactometer.
Milk producers said such associations and training sessions have not only helped them record increased milk production but also to earn more as they are able to determine the milk price by assessing the market situation.
Last year, accumulated milk production from all the associations increased by over 43 percent to 350 litres from 250 litres, the PAB official added.
“We sell a litre of milk at Tk 20-22 nowadays. But we had to sell each litre of milk at Tk 15-16 previously, even though we directly went to the market with our produce,” said Zulekha Begum, one of the members of the milk producers association in Charharirampur village of Birampur.
Begum, another housewife in the area, has two traditional variety cows and she said the milk yield of her cows has increased by nearly two litres reaching about 6 litres, due to providing better quality of feed.
She added, together with all other members of the group, they are now capable of supplying 45 litres of milk daily.
Problems linger.
Dairy farmers here face the dearth of working capital to invest in improving the cow breed due to unavailability of funds from formal financing sources such as banks.
“The formation of an association has benefited me. But what I need now is sufficient fund so that I can invest in improved breeds,” said Rekha, a housewife from Postompur village.
Officials of PAB, who have taken the initiatives to improve the breed of cows through artificial insemination, said they are trying to link producers with formal financing institutions such as banks. They also plan to ask big processors such as Milk Vita and Rangpur Dairy to collect milk from the area.
“We are currently bringing in more farmers into this network so that they can supply hefty quantities of milk regularly to these large processors,” added the officials.
MA Kabir, managing director of Rangpur Dairy, observed that the system developed in the region is encouraging. “We have expanded our milk collection drive up to Thakurgoan. We will consider collecting milk from the region in coming days.”
A senior official of Tetra Pack, one of the world's biggest food companies, said milk sourcing has become an important factor for processors to meet growing demand.
“Working with people having a minimum level of education on cow rearing appears to be easier than working with those having no education,” the official said.
Zulekha and her mates now dream of setting up a dairy farm that will produce milk on a large scale as the association is generating savings. Total savings of the association now stands at Tk 25,000.
“We want to set up a dairy farm after we generate a reasonable amount of savings,” she said.

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