Indur Intideepam Mutually Aided Thrift & Credit Cooperative Societies Federation Ltd (IIMF) is a self governed and managed CBO of 45.000 rural women as members with self help finance as its backbone. IIMF works in Nizamabad and Adilabad districts of Andhra Pradesh state, India. IIMF is an Apex organization of 15 Women Farmers Mutually Aided Cooperative Societies (MACS) in Nizamabad district, Andhra Pradesh. IIMF has become totally autonomous from April 2006. The 45.000 women members from 550 villages are mostly dalits (untouchables or castless women who have the lowest social status in India). IIMF promotes the self help approach and promotes livelihood improvement through self help finance. IIMF has promoted the Intideepam Mahila Dairy Producer Company starting with 1850 women milk producers in 2007. IIMF Board had set up a Dairy Working Group, responsible for implementation of the dairy programme. In 2008, IIMF obtained a 3 years soft loan from Oikocredit India (Manaveeya Oikocredit) being a total of Rs. 83.296.000 (€1,4 million Euros) to cover capital costs for 20 new BMCUs, milk cans, generators and electronic milk testing equipment. In 2008, 7 Bulk Milk Cooling Units (BMCU) have been constructed. The membership has expanded till 8750 women dairy farmers. The dairy is currently procuring milk from 175 villages and cooling it in a modern way, producing quality milk. GRAM, an NGO promotoing and nurturing IIMF, is partially meeting the dairy staff costs to help them to sustain during the gestation period. Agriterra has been supporting IIMF since 2008. Initially a one year contract of € 50,000 was agreed upon, as it was a new organisation for Agriterra. Rabobank Foundation supported IIMF with a grant of € 35,000 in 2008. IIMF is requesting financial support for 2 years from Agriterra and Rabobank Foundation in order to contribute with capacity building, staff costs and technical inputs. BMCUs will be expanded with 5 no. in 2009 and with 5 no. in 2010. This is less as compared to the original plans from 2007, as those plans appeared during 2008 to be too optimistic. The loan amount request to Manaveeya has accordingly been scaled down as well. In line with the expansion of BMCUs it is expected that a total of 15.000 (2009) and 25.500 (2010) milk producers will become members of IIMF Dairy, from 300 (2009) and 425 (2010) villages. At the end of the project, a total of 25.500 farmers from 425 villages will produce 86.500 liters of milk per day. This means that milk production per producer is decreasing bit, but capacity utilization of BMCUs is increasing from 29% in 2008 to 59% in 2010.

IIMF has successfully brought together 2500 women running a small milk supply chain for the past two years, entirely self financed (INR 4.5 million). This has instantly enhanced a 40 percent return to the milk producers that was a leak in the value chain. This value addition to their tiny milk surplus is encouraging women to enhance production for higher returns. In this background a women milk producer’s company started evolving as sustainable membership based interface with external markets. This proposal is to organize 40,000 rural women milk producers to form 550 village level producer institutions into a legal entity under the (producer) companies act, to create infrastructure in the form of establishing 22 bulk milk cooling facilities to procure, chill and market quality liquid bulk milk to earn additional incomes with transparent, technologically advanced, professionally managed and producer centric systems. The NGO GRAM Abhyudaya Mandali has promoted the CBO. The CBO is now a direct expanding organization diversifying to bring in more development inclusion, under the lead role of women, to begin with dairying. The role transformation made GRAM a back end supporter of the CBO. GRAM is supporting IIMF’s dairy initiative. India is a lead country in the world milk production primarily contributed by the millions of small holder producers at the receiving end. Organizing milk producers to build a strong supply chain first will give them the experience of enhanced returns to further motivate scale for enhanced incomes. This requires an appropriate combination of scale, technology and professional support. It also requires an ambiance of mutual appreciation and enduring partnership between producers and professionals to gain sustained entry into market driven competitive business. To make this happen GRAM has conceptualized DESI dairy as a renewal strategy. The new law allows village level primary milk producer institutions as building blocs form their own producer company. The organized women with self help backbone in IIMF holds the promise to deal this task, as they have already demonstrated in their ongoing dairy pilot. Institution Building (IB) Plan aims at strengthening and expanding the producer company at three levels : 1.Milk Producer Institutions (MPIs) or Pala Sanghams in vernacular 2.Bulk Milk Cooler Unit (BMCU) pooling milk from 25 villages with middle level governance 3.Producer Company at the apex with 22 BMCUs catering 550 villages Capacity Building (CB) Plan aims at 1.Capacitating the primary milk producers and their governing structures at village, cluster and apex levels 2.Capacitating the staff to deliver towards efficient and profitable dairy supply chain Objectives: I To organize village level milk producer institutions (MPIs) to streamline milk marketing II To promote the ongoing dairy initiative into an independent business entity of women milk Producers Company III To enhance milk productivity through facilitation of extension services and backward linkages IV To establish a technologically superior and transparent system of milk collection and payments V To facilitate integration of IIMF’s credit package with dairy requirements VI To capacitate the governing structures at all levels of the producer company Main activities entails: Details of activities , expected results can be found in the logframe. The grant proposal for Agriterra