|
The farmer-oened Amul Cooperative in Anand, Gujarat, has become a model for all dairy development projects in India. This model showed that an integrated approach along cooperative lines could enhance production, procurement, processing and marketing of milk. However, the conventional system has many problems: (i) Quality control was a major problem. NDDB worked to reduce quality variations among sellers by upgrading the technology of milk prouction by improving cattle feed and milk processing and delivery infrastructure. (ii) Fair and efficient market do not occer by accident, but are created. The cooperatives had difficulties to ensure accuracy in measuring quantity and fat content of milk and making fair payment to the farmers. (iii) Before automation, the farmers was paid only every 10 days. Therefore, even though at times he or she delivered milk each day the farmrs was not sure of the reliability of the manual calculations of quality and quantity by cooperative society staff. |
|
The conventional Gerber method takes 2 to 3 hours to ascertain the fat content of milk. This in turn leads to a delay in the payment to the farmers as the payment is made strictly on the quality of milk. To overcome this, Milko-tester was developed by a Danish firm. This is accurate and speedy, suited for the village conditions. In addition, PC-based milk collection system was introduced for speedy and accurate collection of milk. The cost of PC-based automatic milk collection system was about $2,250 in early 1990's but now it coast about $1,800. NDDB financially supported 200 units using untied foreign assistance funds and government budget. |