MILMA Launches ‘Milk Challenge’ to Boost Sales and Back Dairy Farmers

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Seeking to lift the sagging milk procurement and sales due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, MILMA, has launched a ‘Milk Challenge’ campaign to encourage people to consume more milk to boost their immunity and help the hard-hit dairy farmers by increasing sales.

“Have a little more milk, save our dairy farmers” is the basic theme of the drive, which exhorts people to boost their immunity by consuming more milk, which will also help dairy farmers across the state, facing difficulty due to a drastic fall in procurement and sale of milk.

Urging the people to take up the ‘Milk Challenge’ voluntarily and turn it into a roaring success, the campaign states that, besides the healthy benefit, consuming more milk will save dairy farmers from slipping into a deeper crisis, especially in the Malabar region.

Milma procures around 8 Lakh litres of milk from the milk co-operatives in the Malabar region a day. However, milk sales now stood close to 4 Lakh litres only due to the stiff restrictions arising from the lockdown. Milma is in a position to procure only 60 percent of the total output, leaving a huge surplus at the primary level. This deepening crisis could be overcome if the consumers increase their consumption by at least half a litre a day, Milma authorities said in a statement today.

Kerala has become a milk sufficient state mainly on account of the dawn-to-midnight toil of thousands of dairy farmers in the length and breadth of the state. Now, they are passing through a hard time and it is for the consumers to support and help them survive the crisis, said the statement.

Earlier, Milma had sought an exemption from the restrictions arising from the ‘triple lockdown’ clamped on four districts to contain the spread of Covid-19, pointing out that these curbs would seriously mar its procurement and distribution operations.

In an earlier letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Milma Chairman, PA Balan Master had also requested the government to offset the additional cost incurred by Milma by routing the unsold surplus to milk powder factories outside the state, which has also now been hit, with the neighboring states enforcing lockdowns.