Dairy plants to come up at Keonjhar and Angul

Each plant to have milk processing capacity of 30,000 litres per day

The Odisha government plans to set up two new dairy plants in the state with each having milk processing capacity of 30,000 litres per day.

“For forward linkage  on marketing milk supplied by the dairy farmers , our government has supported establishment of eleven dairy plants having capacity of 5.45 lakh litres per day with more than 350 bulk milk coolers, ice cream plants, milk powder plant and milk product factory. Construction of two new dairy plants, two ice cream plants and one more cattle feed plant are under progress,” said Pradeep Maharathy, minister for agriculture, fisheries and animal resources development.

He was speaking at the inauguration of national symposium on Women Empowerment through dairying organized by National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

Sources said, the new plants will come up at Angul and Keonjhar with an investment of Rs eight crore each. Similarly the new ice cream plans are proposed at Sambalpur and Bhawanipatana with a combined investment of about Rs 13 crore while the cattle feed plant will be located near Phulnakhara in Cuttack district. The milk production in Odisha has increased from 1.4 million tonnes per annum in 2006-07 to 1.78 million tonnes per annum in 2013-14.

“This (increase) has been possible due to sustained efforts to organise farmers into dairy cooperation. Nearly 80 percent of milk in the state is produced by small holders and cooperatives have been instrumental in boosting their income,” said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

By June this year, more than 800 women cooperatives are functioning with about 56 thousand women members. On an average, women cooperative societies are collecting more than 90 thousand litres of milk per day, and women farmers are getting about Rs 75 crore annually towards the cost of milk, Patnaik added.

Under the State Agriculture Policy, women entrepreneurs are provided with 50 percent capital investment subsidy for dairy farming.

It may be noted that Odisha has a sizeable cattle population of 1.23 crore and accounts for 1.4 per cent of the national milk production. The per capita availability of milk is only 120 gms per day in the state against the national average of 280 gms per day. OMFED has 11 milk unions covering the entire state with 5281 organised milk cooperative societies involving 2.72 lakh farmers (including 57,000 women farmers) in the state.

“There are about 0.16 million village cooperatives in the country covering 15.5 million members, out of which 0.43 million are women. The number of women members is likely to increase in future,” said T Nanda Kumar, Chairman, NDDB

Later in the day, Dilip Rath, managing director, NDDB and Bishnupada Sethi, secretary, state Fisheries & ARD department signed a pact for setting up a state of the art semen station in Mauyrbhanj district.