Implementation of Community Dairy Farms Programme, initiated by Pakistan Dairy Development Company (PDDC) to provide livestock farmers modern, timely and cost effective advice and assistance for increased milk production and price, can almost double the milk production besides helping alleviation of poverty from the rural areas.
The programme has already produced many success stories in different parts of the country and owners of a few such farms, situated in Rahim Yar Khan District, have found it a prosperous business, producing milk for their own use and also to sell to earn money for their other needs.
Assistance in marketing of their produce and practising guidelines given by the PDDC, such as 24 hours free access to water, ensuring availability of green fodder throughout the year, provision of good shelter, saving from the extreme weather, and keeping animals untied, instead of traditional method of chaining, have increased milk production per animal from 4.8 litres to 11 litres per day.
This was observed by a group of journalists, based at Lahore and Karachi, who visited community farms established in Chah Kinni, Basti Khair Muhammad Khokhar, Basti Master Abdul Aziz and Mauza Sial (Rahim Yar Khan District). Assistance of the PDDC and also from the JDW Sugar Mills has improved their living standard, ensuring handsome earning, and owning more animals, and their children are now going to schools.
Team Manager of Community Dairy Farms Programme, Nadeem Abbas, talking to journalists, said that the Company had helped livestock farmers in collective marketing of their produce to improve the economic benefits by dairy animals to villages. Through this, farmers started earning a price of Rs 38 per litre, instead of earlier price of Rs 18-20 per litre.
He said that during the course of the Programme, the Community is taught about importance of proper nutrition, constant free access to water, and fencing animals as opposed to keeping them tied up, which enables them to exhibit their natural behaviour at all times. They are trained to grow high yielding varieties of fodder and learn of the importance of providing all animals with green fodder. Particular attention is given to the hygienic production of unadulterated milk, and care of animals to ensure healthy disease-free animals are used to produce healthy milk.
Attention is paid to village and farm cleanliness and hygiene, and installation of Biogas units in many villages is providing clean and smoke-free environment for women who do the cooking and heating in homes. Biogas units provide excellent source of free, high quality, organic fertiliser, which is used to great effect in growing crops.
Jehangir Khan Tareen, of JDW Sugar Mills, helped farmers a lot by providing them animals with better milk production as loan on soft terms and giving grant for setting up Biogas plants.
President of Basti Sial Community Based Organised (CBO), running a community dairy farm, Muhammad Ameer Khan Sial, President CBO Chah Kinni Ahmad Bukhsh and farmers from other such farms, while sharing their views with journalists said that by joining the PDDC programme they have not only increased their income but their living standard has also improved. President of Basti Sial said that in the past they did not sell milk, and production was enough only to meet their own needs. "We have to work for almost six months on our elders to convince them to join the PDDC programme and sell milk for the benefit of our members and our children," Ameer said. "After joining this programme not only our milk production increased but now we are also earning around 120,000 per month".
In Chah Kinni, milk produced by the CBO was being picked up by Nestle, which has provided a chiller to the community. It is also paying the rent of shop where the milk of community is collected and chilled.
After the success of these 58 farms set up all over the country since 2007, JDW Sugar Mills and National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) have joined hands and acquired the services of PDDC staff in Rahim Yar Khan to set up 30 more such farms in the District.
Jehangir Tareen, who was Federal Minister for Industries and Special Initiatives at the time when PDDC and its programme was launched, is behind this move to ensure continuation of the Company's efforts to improve the living standard of poor farmers by boosting milk production.