Outspan expands efforts to improve local milk production

Outspan Nigeria Limited, a subsid­iary company of ofi, has stepped up efforts to improve milk production in the country.

The local milk production expan­sion efforts undertaken by Outspan are geared at helping the federal government achieve its policies of reducing the importation of critical food produce whose production can be successfully scaled up locally by redirecting investment to raising the standards of local agriculture infrastructure and equipping lo­cal smallholder farmers with the knowledge of latest farming prac­tices.

As a follow up on the establish­ment of two additional milk col­lection centres (MCC), an upgrade of a local bulking centre, and an artificial insemination exercise carried out on 100 cattle to boost the genetics of local dairy breeds in Kano, Outspan recently organised a capacity-building programme on dairy production management for smallholder dairy farmers in the state to deepen its backward inte­gration programme in the dairy value chain.

The recent capacity-building training was executed in conjunc­tion with the Kano Dairy and Live­stock Husbandry Cooperative Union (KADALCU), which comprises over 70,000 smallholder dairy farmers.

The intense dairy farming train­ing initiative is aimed at expanding both upstream and midstream seg­ments of the dairy value chain to strengthen the knowledge and skill levels of the cooperative’s members and milk collectors at the MCC.

It is believed that this scaled strategic intervention will ensure sustainability and consistency in milk production quality and volume within the dairy farming commu­nity.

Praveen Paulsamy, General Man­ager for ofi Dairy in Nigeria while speaking about Outspan’s milk pro­duction value chain development ef­forts, said: “Through our purpose to re-imagine global agriculture and food systems, we aim to address the many challenges involved in meet­ing the needs of our local markets while achieving positive impact for the farming communities, our plan­et and our stakeholders.

“We are partnering and investing in Kano dairy union cooperatives to improve the output levels of the 70,000 strong smallholder dairy farmers’ group that make up the union by upscaling, fine-tuning and expanding their farming oper­ations via farming infrastructure upgrade, the introduction of mem­bers to trending farming practices and innovations.

“This latest capacity-building initiative has no doubt exposed the smallholder dairy farmers to new skills, which will come handy in all their dairy farming practices,” he added.

Dr. Celestine Ayok, a dairy con­sultant, who trained the smallholder farmers , said, it is quite obvious the dairy farmers accepted the pattern of the training module adopted during the training.

Independent