06ii-4686 - Co-operative dairy processing by women small holder producers
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