08ii-5277 - Upscaling of milk production and milk collection by women small holder producers
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.