Dairy farmers and their families committed themselves towards making India the ‘Dairy of the World’ on the occasion of World Milk Day saying that the only way forward to alleviate rural India from poverty and bring about socio-economic change is by working towards establishing the country as the global leader in the dairy sector.
On the occasion, the dairy farmers members of 22 milk producer companies (farmer producer organisations) came together and committed themselves to make India ‘Dairy of the World’ by increasing the country’s share of the total global production; ‘provide quality milk and milk products to consumers by sourcing milk even from the remotest part of the country’; provide a competitive price to farmer members through a fair and transparent process of milk collection and making payments in their respective bank accounts and increase milk productivity through breed improvement programmes and better animal management practices.
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Speaking at the occasion, Meenesh Shah, Chairman of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) said, “The world dairying community only months back paid rich tributes to rural India and dairy farmers at the World Dairy Summit 2022. We are part of this proud community of milk producers and are working on numerous initiatives for enhancing production and productivity in India towards making India the dairy of the world.”
During the World Milk Day celebrations, from distant Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh to coastal Gujarat to spreads of Rajasthan to the hinterlands of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the dairy farmers took the pledge and thanked the government for outlining the way forward by giving them a cherished goal of making the country a global leader to attain the target of 33 per cent market share in the decade to come.
It is pertinent to note that India’s collective drive towards ‘Dairy of the World’ has women empowerment ingrained into it, as out of 22 milk producer companies (MPCs) supported by NDDB Dairy Services (NDS), 15 have all-women membership and all the producer directors’ on their Boards too are women. These 22 MPCs spread across 130 districts in nine states of the country, have 8.7 lakh members and 71 per cent of them are women.
