Milk-and-Dairy-Products-in-Human-Nutrition-FAO

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Milk and dairy products in human nutrition
Keywords: Dairy industry, inclusive dairy value chain development, SME investments,
improved dairy-industry programme design, women benefits dairying,
income, employment
8.1 Introduction
This chapter reviews diverse dairy programmes and provides insights on maximizing
the benefits of dairying for smallholders. In developing countries, smallholders
play an important part in providing milk and milk products; with demand increasing,
they can also have a more significant role in dairy-industry development. We
define dairy-industry development as activities that ensure milk and dairy products
are available, affordable, nutritious and safe by assisting small- and medium-scale
dairy producers, processors and service providers to maximize their capacities to
meet demand.
In developing countries, dairy farmers range on a continuum from subsistence
activities outside the cash economy, through more commercial/industrialized
production in the formal cash economy, to specialized peri-urban pockets of
dairying resembling highly-capitalized production in developed countries (World
Bank, 2007a). FAO (2008) describes this evolution from subsistence smallholder
milk producer to small-scale commercial dairy farmer process as a virtuous circle.
Rising earnings from dairying foster indigenous expertise and manufacturing in
off-farm jobs, which compete with dairying for labour but also boost demand for
dairy products (Candler and Kumar, 1998). Smallholder production stimulates
rural development in both developing and developed countries by creating on-farm
employment and income opportunities beyond the farm gate, e.g. in Ghana one
full-time job is created for every 20 litres of milk collected, processed and marketed
(FAO, 2004a).The more this formalization of smallholder dairying proceeds the
more it can be termed industrial.
While there has been significant interest in dairy-industry development over the
last 50–60 years, not all efforts were sustainable. Some early DIDPs were supply
driven rather than demand or nutrition driven. In Africa the model was often for
international and especially bilateral agencies to transfer large-scale Western technologies
mainly from the dairy plant to the consumer. These often failed.
Significantly, home-bred programmes in South Africa and Zimbabwe had specifically
excluded smallholder local farmers through rules and regulations that favoured
larger farms. In contrast, Kenya is a good example of inclusion of smallholders in
the dairy industry. In South Asia, especially Bangladesh and India, recent DIDPs
focus on very poor, even landless, farmers with pro-poor partners such as Grameen
Bank; as a result they are well tailored to local conditions.
Milk is a source of regular income, because it is produced and sold daily and
cannot be stored like arable crops. In developing countries dairy animals are kept
by small-scale farmers, mainly in mixed-farming operations. In addition to meat,
milk, hides and traction for carts and ploughs, animals provide income, employment,
sociocultural wealth and act as cash reserves. In some systems dairy animals
are fed crop residues and their wastes furnish fuel for energy and organic fertilizer.
Manure for fuel is fundamental in many countries, especially South Asia (Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan), and there is increasing interest in manure
as a sustainable source of biogas in rural areas. In some farming systems manure