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

336
Milk and dairy products in human nutrition
Some cooperatives have evolved and formed public limited companies and
partnerships that have become national and multinational corporations such as
Campina in the Netherlands, Fonterra in New Zealand and Land O’Lakes in the
United States.
8.7.2 Dairying in developing countries
Dairying has not featured prominently in large development programmes of many
regions despite its potential to catalyse rural development. Because of the range
of skills and services needed for successful implementation, national governments
usually involved development agencies or used bilateral aid to support implementation
of such programmes. In order to stimulate a participatory approach, emphasis
was placed on organizing producers. As noted in Section 8.6.2, the type of association
adopted varies.
Many countries established dairy development institutions during the last
40–50 years as part of national dairy development programmes. This section
reviews some of the regional approaches used and the lessons learned from them.
Africa
Dairy development in Africa has often focused on producer groups. Formerly,
cooperatives in Africa were often organs of the state and their success has been
mixed. Governments planned development packages ranging from animal breeding
and feeding to processing and marketing, but for a combination of reasons
the plans did not fully materialize. Perhaps best known African dairy cooperative
is KCC, which was formed by large milk producers before independence. After
independence many of the farms were subdivided, and the government took over
KCC as a parastatal institution while retaining the KCC name. Initially it was a
great success but subsequently collapsed after a series of political and management
scandals including the acceptance of all milk from producers. After price decontrol
in 1992 and elimination of KCC’s monopoly status, private enterprises and farmers’
groups joined the processing and marketing sectors, and informal milk marketing
expanded. In 2003 an FAO technical cooperation project assisted restructuring
the Kenya Dairy Board in a comprehensive five-year plan aimed at supporting the
development of the dairy industry in Kenya (FAO, 2003).
In Tanzania the cooperative movement was controlled by the government and
its apex organization, Tanzanian Dairies Limited (TDL), provided milk collection,
processing and marketing functions. However, TDL went into liquidation and
small-scale processing emerged in the 1990s with a combination of on-farm processing,
smallholder cooperatives and private vendors. A new representative Dairy
Development Board, established in 2004, is now in operation and has the mandate
for improving and encouraging investment in the dairy sector (FAO, 2011d).
The government dominates dairying in Swaziland. Attempts to establish
independent milk producer cooperatives have had limited success, although the
Matsapha Dairy Plant was privatized in the mid-1990s under the first phase of the
National Dairy Development Plan prepared with FAO support.
The term cooperative was also unpopular in Malawi, so the Government developed
a system of local and regional bulking groups and a national apex group. This
was relatively successful in the 1980s and early 1990s, but dwindling government