The Food Ministry has finalised a five-year plan costing Rs 1.588 billion to establish 300 milk chilling plants to help farmers enhance the quality of their produce, sources said. It said that the project is designed to have a check on milk standards.
Pakistan is one of the fifth largest producers of the milk in the world but due to lack of modern technology a major portion of the production is either wasted or utilised with little advantage to farmers.
They said that under this plan, farmers' organisations would be given milk chillers. "We have provided 23 milk chillers in Kasur (Punjab), Pishin (Balochistan), Tando Adam Khan and Tando Muhammad Khan (Sindh) and Naushehra and Taht Bhai (NWFP) until now and have planned to distribute the rest of 277 across the country during this five-year plan period."
Moreover, under this plan, the farmers will be provided loans to improve the production and quality of milk while free veterinary services will also be provided to ensure better health of the livestocks.
"Another important component of the plan is the 'progeny testing' in which semens collected from healthy bulls, will be stored and then distributed to the farmers to increase the production of good quality animals," they explained.
They disclosed that the milk prices had gone up in the domestic market just because of rising trend at international level. "For the last three years, the milk prices are increasing day by day in international market. Even the dry milk prices have increased by 60-70 percent," they said. They added that the drought in Australia is the main reason of the rise in prices of milk.
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