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

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Milk and dairy products in human nutrition
were assumed to be lactose-intolerant (fermented milk products including yoghurt
contains less lactose than milk; see Chapter 5).
Around Gogounou, in the north of Benin, 300 women involved in an FAO dairy
development project delivered 600 litres of milk a day to a small dairy plant set up
by the project, with 20 milk collectors and a team of three women for the milk
processing (Bennett, 2010).
In June 2003, at the beginning of an FAO goat milk production project near
Lima, Peru, six women were collecting 1 530 litres of goats milk each month; by
October 2005 this had increased to 264 women collecting 21 500 litres per month.
During this period each poor family in the valley saw their income increase from
200 Soles per month to 1 800 soles (J.C. Lambert, personal communication, 2012).
In 1989, the Sichuan Livestock Development Project, a project sponsored
by IFAD, found that involving women in dairying increased family income and
reduced the need for men to leave the village for employment (Rahman, 1995).
A study by ILRI and the national research institutes in Kenya and Ethiopia
(Tangka, Ouma and Staal, 1999) confirmed the traditionally important role of
women in milk production in Kenya but found that women played a much smaller
role in dairying in Ethiopia. In Kenya, women alone controlled dairy income in
50 percent of interviewed households, with husbands and wives jointly controlling
income in another 25 percent of the cases. On average Kenyan women constitute
70.4 percent of dairy-farm operators, ranging from 88.9 percent in female-headed
households to 61.1 percent in male-headed households. In contrast, in Ethiopia
women contributed only 5.5 percent of the labour involved in dairying in households
with crossbred cattle, and only 5 percent in households with indigenous cattle.
The Grameen Bank/FAO integrated social dairy chain model in Bangladesh
(livestock/fish farming system) increased the number of women beneficiaries from
under 5 percent to over 60 percent, with over half of women rising to become Village
Group Chiefs (see Box 8.6). Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus cites benefits
of women’s participation in livestock/fish farming systems which supply the Grameen
Danone yoghurt plant (Grameen Bank/FAO/UNDP, 2007).
Dairy programmes such as the EADD project (Box 8.3) prepare women and
youth for leadership and management at primary farmer organization, secondary
dairy company management and technical levels (EADD, 2010). Results from a limited
survey in two dairy business hub sites in Kenya show that increased milk production
at household level translates into increased milk consumption by children
and therefore improved nutrition. The challenge for farmers who intensify dairying
relates to increased labour requirements for women. Recent calls for awareness
raising and promotion of labour-saving technologies to mitigate possible negative
impacts show recognition that family well-being and gender relations need attention
as production scale rises from subsistence, to transforming, to commercial dairying.
8.4 Education and knowledge
Agricultural projects in poverty reduction strategies that have been implemented
without strong education components have had little success (Walingo, 2006), and
gender imbalance in access to education in pastoral communities has been shown to
limit success of interventions (Peacock, 2008). Targeting women in technology dissemination
can have greater impact on poverty than targeting men: IFPRI estimates