Tetra Pak Pakistan, the world's leading food processing and packaging solution company, in collaboration with DeLaval and the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) has launched a 16-week training programme for the dairy hub staff.
The basic objective of this initiative is to train and uplift the knowledge of staff involved in 'Dairy Hub' programme and to help the farmers in improving productivity and efficiency.
Dairy Hub is a Community Dairy Development Programme (CDDP). It is a one-herd concept that organises and develops smallholder farmers' milk production. There is a huge room for improvement in Pakistan's dairy sector with its ever-widening demand supply gap of milk expected to be increase to 3.6 billion liters by year 2015. Demand of milk is increasing 15 percent per annum while the supply is increasing only 3-4 percent per annum.
This was disclosed at a press launch of the programme organised at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) here on Saturday. It was informed at the briefing that Dairy hub is one viable solution to the problem of meeting supply-demand gap as it would provide Agri-services and training and help farmers by educating them on animals feeding and diseases.
This would lead to improve quality and quantity of raw milk, improve market access, an efficient value chain, enhance smallholder competitiveness, improve livelihood in subsistence agriculture, increase employment in agriculture and enhance skills of farmers.
Dairy Hub project has the support of several key players in the dairy industry including Engro Foods Ltd, Nestle Pakistan Ltd, and the Livestock and Dairy Development Board (LDDB). The programme kicked off with the development of the Kasowal Dairy Hub in June 2009 in collaboration with Engro Foods Ltd. In August, project plans to establish a dairy hub in Mian Channu with the collaboration of Nestle Pakistan and another in Kasur in collaboration with LDDB.
Some 6000 smallholders and dairy farmers will benefit directly or indirectly through these three dairy hubs leading to increase in productivity of about 90,000 animals. Speaking at the press conference, Azhar Ali Syed, Managing Director, Tetra Pak Pakistan said that there were many challenges in the way of having a fully developed dairy farming sector. To overcome each of these challenges, a tremendous level of investment both from the government and private sector is required.
This is why Tetra Pak Pakistan and DeLaval have been working actively with the dairy industry and milk processors on several initiatives- farmer education, capacity building and infrastructural development are some of them, he added. Vice Chancellor University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), Dr Talat Naseer Pasha said this programme is a need-based training that focuses on the areas where our field staff lacks in professional knowledge.
He said training modules are designed according to the requirements of the smallholder farmers and for this purpose highly qualified and experienced professionals both from academia and industry are conducting this course.
Deputy Project Co-ordinator Livestock and Dairy Development Board, Dr Naveed Niazi also spoke on this occasion and threw light on various projects being carried out by the Board for the well being of livestock farmers and increasing milk productivity. DeLaval's M.D Haroon M. K. Lodhi, Nestle's Head Milk Collection and Agri-services, Jack Moser and General Manager Milk Procurement Engro Foods, Amir Khawas also spoke on this occasion.
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