The revival of women societies and strengthening of procurement mechanism have helped milk procurement jump multifold in the state. The state government’s Jagananna Paala Velluva scheme has completely transformed the milk procurement scenario as the women dairy farmers reaped rich dividends from the additional incentives granted by the state government as well as the timely payments made by the Amul.

The procurement activity was initially undertaken in just 400 villages with 2,000 litres of milk per day. It went up to 4,114 villages with 2,84 lakh litres of milk per day within three years. The scheme saw active participation of 3,73,850 women dairy farmers who poured a total of 22,38,055.27 litres of milk which comes to an average of 2,73,806 litres of milk procurement per day.

This is stunning reversal of the milk procurement scenario as the total procurement by the cooperative societies was just around 30,000 litres per day during 2016-18. In fact, AP was base for a strong cooperative set-up in the past when the three-tier village, district and state level societies were strong. This cooperative movement was built on Anand (Amul) pattern with an objective to organise milk production, augment the income of dairy farmer and to meet the increasing demand for milk from semi-urban areas. “Chandrababu Naidu had killed the cooperative milk dairies to help his own private dairy with the enactment of AP Mutually Aided Coop Societies Act (1995), when he was at the helm in 1995.

A majority of the cooperative milk unions walked out of the coop fold as the district milk unions got converted themselves into MACS Act,” said dairy development minister Dr Sidiri Appalaraju. Several dairies also moved to the Companies Act making the cooperative dairies as personal assets of the then ruling TDP leaders. The vast infrastructure base including the milk processing plants, milk chilling centres and bulk milk cooling units established with crores of rupees of public money remained unutilised and idle due to the closure of district units before 2019.

After CM Jagan took the reins of the state, the state government decided to ensure socioeconomic upliftment of milk producers with special focus on economic empowerment of women, strengthening of overall dairy development activities, providing remunerative milk price to milk producers, ensuring availability of quality milk and milk products at value for money to consumers in the state. .
Source : The Times of India Nov 28th 2023