Advertisement
Pursuing money in milk
Upcoming SlideShare
Solving Underemployment Is Key to Inclusive GrowthSolving Underemployment Is Key to Inclusive Growth
Loading in ... 3
1 of 1
Advertisement

More Related Content

More from ICRISAT(20)

Advertisement

Pursuing money in milk

  1. Newsletter Happenings In-house version 2 July 2021, No.1913 A version of this story first appeared in The Daily Times in Malawi In the media Pursuing money in milk File photo, ICRISAT Joyce Ntikhe, 41, is a budding dairy farmer at Chipendo village in the area of Traditional Authority January in the southern district of Thyolo, Malawi. A few years ago, she invested in her first dairy cow as a way of making money for herself and her family. Today, Joyce has three cows and hopes to increase the size of the herd in the coming years. While dairy farming has helped support her household, it does not provide enough always. Cost of feed is high and efforts to get it are costing farmers a lot of time and money, especially during the dry season. Therefore, production is low and proceeds from milk are not adequate, and farmers cannot afford to drink milk themselves. Being a small farmer in a remote area, farmers like Joyce rely on established processors to sell the milk they produce. Like other small-scale dairy farmers in Malawi, markets remain a challenge. “This area has many small-scale farmers but our challenge remains good markets. Some buyers offer us as little as MK 195 ($0.25) per liter. This is very little compared to how much we need to feed and treat the cows,” says the farmer, a mother of 5 children and owner of 3 dairy cows. A group of entrepreneurs turned into a cooperative for farmers in the area to offer solutions to this challenge. Umodzi Milk Processors Cooperative, a group of 168 milk processors, is now creating a new market for farmers in the area. With support from the European Union-funded Crop- Livestock Integration and Marketing in Malawi (CLIM2 ), a project implemented by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropic (ICRISAT), Small Scale Livestock and Livelihoods Programme (SSLP) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), they have been organizing themselves to grow into a vibrant cooperative. Sabine Homann-Kee Tui, Coordinator for the CLIM2 project, explains that the project’s goal is to increase income and livelihoods for small holders and rural business entities, rural poor and rural youth through sustainable intensification and diversification of affordable plant and animal-based food production and value chains. Thyolo District is the largest producer of milk in Malawi. Despite this, communities are only selling raw milk which does not bring same returns as processed milk
Advertisement