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

Chapter 9 – Human nutrition and dairy development: Trends and issues 357
add up to a growing demand for milk, ghee, butter, cheese, yoghurt, ice cream and
dairy desserts. With rising incomes in parts of the developing world and an increasing
interest even in places where dairy products were not traditionally consumed,
demand for a diverse selection of dairy products can be expected to keep growing.
The diversity of milk sources and dairy products is also likely to have played
a part in demand growth. As described in Chapters 2 and 3, milk is produced for
human consumption by at least 11 species of animals and is processed into a wide
range of products that cater to local preferences. Cattle and buffaloes produce most
of the milk consumed worldwide, but interest in goat and sheep milk has increased
in recent years. Milk from a range of other minor dairy animal species is locally
important in some parts of the world.
At the same time, strong growth in dairy production and consumption has been
limited to certain regions and countries. The developed countries remain the largest
consumers of dairy products per person and have dominated dairy processing
and exports, but they have seen negligible demand growth in the past 30 years
(Chapter 2). The most dramatic growth in per person terms has been in China,
with the rest of East and Southeast Asia, South Asia and Brazil seeing smaller but
still important rises in consumption. In China, urbanization and government promotion
of dairy each may be playing a part, with urban people consuming around
three times as much dairy products as rural dwellers (Chapter 2). In South Asia,
the growth in total demand has been remarkable, although in Bangladesh average
consumption per person is still low for a country where dairy products are integral
to the diet. In Brazil demand for milk has grown although demand for meat has
risen even faster. Equally interesting are the regions where consumption has not
grown. Milk is important in the diets of northern, eastern and southern Africans
and there have been a number of smallholder dairy projects in sub-Saharan Africa,
yet consumption per person in most countries has stagnated or decreased. Low
incomes have contributed to stagnation; milk, like other livestock products, is
income elastic, meaning that as people rise out of poverty they consume more. As
incomes rise in the developing world, there is still potential for demand to grow in
areas where it is currently weak.
Together with growth has come investment from both public and private sectors,
described in Chapter 8. Again there are regional differences. In the developed world
and Argentina and Brazil the private sector has been the major investor in developing
a global industry led by a small number of multinational dairy firms. In 2009,
the top ten dairy companies in the world, with a total turnover in dairy products of
US$114 billion, were multinationals based in Europe, New Zealand and the United
States (Rabobank, 2010). In Argentina the industry is led by about ten national
and multinational companies (FAO, 2011a); in Brazil six multinational and eight
national firms dominate the sector (Chaddad, 2007).
In Asia, however, public-sector-led programmes have been prime movers,
although joint public–private efforts have recently become more popular. The
Indian Government put state funding into the Operation Flood programme for
many years and is now borrowing US$352 million from the World Bank to invest
in the dairy sector (World Bank, undated). Large non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and co-operatives, such as Amul, have also played an important part in
dairy-industry development in India, and there is an increasing although still small