This month, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) will call a conference of the Chairmen and Managing Directors of the nation’s cooperative dairy federations to discuss the delicate subject of milk selling across international borders.
Meenesh C. Shah, the chairman of the NDDB, requested the meeting after Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (KCMMF) chairman K.S. Mani voiced significant concerns about the matter at a recent meeting of the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India (NCDFI) in Varanasi.
KCMMF, which goes by the brand name Milma, has previously expressed grave worry over the Karnataka Milk Federation’s (KMF) incursion into Kerala to sell its Nandini brand of liquid milk.
“This is a complex and multifaceted issue as co-operative dairies have different priorities and interests,” Mani argued persuasively during the NCDFI convention. He added that cooperative dairies could identify solutions that benefited all parties and ensured the delivery of high-quality milk to consumers by cooperating.
Mani underlined that the cooperative dairies should tackle this problem in a cooperative and diplomatic manner in order to protect the co-operative movement’s objectives.
According to a press release from Milma, the NDDB Chairman promised to call a meeting of the chairmen and managing directors of all cooperative dairy federations this month to discuss the problem and look into potential solutions to ensure that the interests of all cooperatives were protected in response to Mani’s strong stance on the matter.
Milma has already emphasized that Kerala’s input costs are far greater than those in most other States while voicing concerns about cross-border marketing. Additionally, the government in Karnataka gives KMF subsidies, which is the main cause of the price differential between Nandini and Milma milk. KMF is using this advantage to sell its Nandini brand of milk for less money rather than sharing this benefit forward to its dairy farmers.