Milkfed MD Kamaldeep Singh Sangha believes that increasing animal productivity and lowering production costs are crucial to dairy farmers making a profit.
Milkfed is making collective efforts to strengthen the dairy sector in order to improve milk production and quality while keeping production costs low.
Punjab produces 6.7% of total milk production in India and has the highest per capita availability of milk in the country, at 1,181 grams per day. The Punjab State Cooperative’s Milk Producers Federation represents over 3.5 lakh dairy farmers in the state (Milkfed).
Depending on the season, the federation purchases between 13 lakhs and 27 lakhs of litres of milk per day. It has a strong network of 6,474 milk producers’ cooperative societies at the village level, milk unions at the district level, and a milk federation at the state level. Milk is obtained twice a day directly from village-level societies, with no intermediaries.
Milkfed managing director Kamaldeep Singh Sangha, a former bureaucrat with extensive experience in cooperatives, believes that increasing animal productivity and lowering production costs are crucial to dairy farmers making a profit. “Breed improvement of milch cattle is critical to increasing the number of female cattle and reducing stray animals,” Sangha says. “We have begun providing high quality sex-sorted semen from high pedigree bulls to our milk producers to ensure female calves are produced in 90% of pregnancies,” he explained.
“The best semen available in the country is being provided to milk producers for intensive breed improvement of Murrah buffaloes and Sahiwal cows.” “At the moment, we produce 3.5 lakh doses of high genetic merit semen per year and provide all Artificial Insemination (AI) services through our own network of 1,000 artificial insemination technicians with unique IDs deployed across the state,” Sangha said.
To maintain standards and transparency, automatic milk collection units and raw milk analyzers have been installed to test milk in real time and provide milk producers with on-the-spot slips displaying milk quantity, fat, SNF, and milk payment details. “We supported our milk producers by procuring 16% more milk in 2020-21, and our procurement is up 14% this year compared to last.”
“We are currently constructing an ultra-heat treatment milk plant in Bassi Pathana, which will be operational by the end of next month. The sale of UHT milk (with a six-month shelf life) increased by 87% last year, with a further 53% increase over the same period the previous year “According to Sangha, pouch milk sales increased by 13%, curd sales increased by 45%, lassi sales increased by 24%, kheer sales increased by 35%, and ice cream sales increased by 75% between September and 2020.
“We’re introducing new products like mozzarella cheese and yoghurt,” he explained. “The Punjab government should also step in so that farmers get better milk rates as production costs have gone up due to high prices of cattle feed,” says Progressive Dairy Farmers Association chief Daljit Singh.