Dairy farmers still counting losses despite govt assurance

The recent government instruction of facilitating livestock sector, including dairy farmers, during countrywide lockdown has hardly benefited local marginal dairy farmers.

As a result, the country’s dairy farmers are still counting huge losses as they find themselves in a difficult situation to sell their items including milk, ghee, curd and chives.

Recently government had issued an instruction to the local administration to facilitate the supply, transportation, marketing, and other logistics support to the livestock industry businesses as those are perishable items and local dairy farmers could not preserve these.

The instruction came after the dairy farmers’ association and others met the officials of the  Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock on March 25 seeking support and instruction to run their businesses during the countrywide lockdown. 

President of Bangladesh Dairy Farmers' Association (BDFA) Mohammed Imran Hossain told the FE that the notice issued at the eleventh hour, in practical, could not be helpful for local dairy farmers.

We demand financial support of the government for the livestock sector especially for the small and marginal farmers for their survival, he added.     

During meeting, the local milk processing companies showed sympathy and assurance of buying row dairy items from local small and marginal farmers but we still didn’t get any such support from them, he mentioned.

Citing the crisis, the association leader urged the country’s milk processing companies to come to help them, otherwise 50 per cent of the total dairy farms in the country could be shut down. They said large companies only buy 5.0 per cent of the total milk produced by the local dairy farmers.

 [email protected]