Feeding Systems with Legumes to Intensify Dairy Farms - cgiar

Analysis of the Milk Market of Small-Scale Artisan Cheese
Factories in Watersheds of Honduras and Nicaragua Involved
in Livestock Production
Federico Holmann
CIAT-ILRI, Colombia
Processing plants collect 20% of the milk produced in Honduras and
Nicaragua that is turned into pasteurized milk and other dairy products.
The price paid for milk during the study period was approximately
US$0.30/kg in both countries, but this price was obtained by less than 5%
of dairy farms in both countries because these plants require that milk be
cooled to improve its hygienic quality and that farms be located in easily
accessible sites with good roads (Argel, 1999a; 1999b).
The “informal” market collects the remaining 80% of the milk produced
in both countries, mainly in the form of cheese (Argel, 1999a; 1999b). This
market is mainly constituted by small-scale artisan cheese factories—mostly
located in milk-producing areas—that do not pasteurize milk. These
factories transform milk into popular fresh cheeses with shelf lives shorter
than 10 days (De Franco et al., 1995). In Honduras alone, there were about
600 artisan cheese factories at the time of the study (Argel, 1999a). As a
result, the artisan cheese industry in both countries is the principal buyer of
milk produced by small and medium producers who do not fulfill the
requirements of milk processing plants of the known “formal” sector.
Seasonality in Production
The price paid to producers by artisan cheese factories depends on the
supply of milk, which has a marked seasonality: it is abundant during the
rainy season and scarce during the dry season. This situation leads to
serious difficulties in allocating surplus milk produced during the rainy
season because both countries lack an efficient industrialization and
marketing system. The seasonality in production causes milk prices to
fluctuate, with differences of up to 50% between seasons (De Franco et al.,
1995; Cajina, 1994).
In addition to this problem of seasonality, most milk collected by
artisan cheese factories during the rainy season is of poor quality with
bacterial counts close to 1,000,000/cc. The pasteurization process does not
correct this problem for raw milks with bacterial counts higher than
500,000 bacteria/cc because pasteurization only guarantees the elimination
135