Cooperation, the only way.

When your house and cows are situated halfway up a mountain, your nearest neighbour is a twenty minute walk away, and to reach the customers for your main source of regular income requires a three and half hour drive, down to the flat eastern Nepal plains, there is only one option for survival-----Cooperate with fellow farmers.

A patchwork of tea gardens and woodland make-up the Ilam landscape

Uchit's small farm perched on the hillside.



Uchit proudly shows us his two cows

Uchit Bahadur Rai, is a milk producer in Nepal’s most eastern district, Ilam. From his hillside small holding we can see the distant hills of India. Milk is not the most important agricultural product here, since conditions are ideal for growing Nepal’s favourite drink plant, tea. Rice, millet and maize have all been displaced by low growing tea bushes, set out like a ‘mini maze’ across the undulating hillsides. But there are storm clouds on the horizon for this beverage industry, where the processors  sheds also punctuate this manicured landscape. The world price of tea has dropped by 75% and with it the incomes of the main ethnic group that populate Ilam, the Rai. Thoughts of once more of returning to producing  milk as a ‘cash cow’ are starting to emerge amongst the scattered rural communities but the change will not be without hitches.

Tea gardens have replaced most other enterprises. Its the dry season and picking has not started

Ponies are a practical and popular form of transport in the mountainous district of Ilam.

No one has reached a point of ripping out the carefully clipped tea gardens, but finding a source of food for animals during the 8 month dry season has been particularly hard in this district. With limited quantities of arable bi-products such as rice straw or maize stalks available farmers have turned to gathering ‘Broom’ plant leaves. This plant is named after its seed heads which are cut to make brushes. Being a member of the bamboo family, which is famed for being the only food of the lonely Panda. This herbivore has to literally eat all day to gain enough sustenance. So Broom plants are not brimming with nutrients.

Broom plant --'friend or foe'

Women gather forage for livestock. Maize stalks on the left and Broom plant on the right. A pile of the other main bulk feed, rice straw lies further to the left.

 

We’ve arrived in Ilam after a 12 day trip taking in Tanahau, Nawalparasi, Lalitpur, Kavre ,Chitwan and  Makawanpur districts in Nepals central region. Our small team of four have been charged with visiting milk chilling centres and farmers to recommend how linkages between them could be improved. Two team members represent the dairy processors and milk collecting cooperatives, the third is a chartered accountant who specialises in investment advice, and I complete the gang. My role is to advise and increase the knowledge of my fellow team members.



The Team. From the left, Saurabh the Team Leader, with one of the Nepali national cricket team we met along the way (sporting a light blue hat), Kobiraj representing farmers, and Rajendra representing the milk processors.



In Lalitpur, another hilly district close to Kathmandu, buffalo are the main source of milk. Here a woman tends the large herd whilst her daughter-in-law uses an electric chaff cutter to chop straw and grasses for the stock.

A Nawalparasi  District producer with his herd.

 

Back to Uchit Rai and the problems he faces, which are similar to those faced by all the milk producers we have visited. How to get the 5 to 10 litres (occasionally more but most often less) produced each day to the market place. Nepal’s farmers are wonderful at cooperating and by setting up milk collection points, and chilling centres, the literally hundreds of producers in an area can bring their milk together and present a sizable volume that can be sold on to a processor. Each morning the paths, tracks, steps and roads are the networks by which farmers carry aluminium cans of product to the aggregation point. From here women farmers, ponies, bicycles, carts carry churns up the chain to a chilling centre for cooling and final transport to the buyer. A woman will earn 300 rupees per hour for carrying a 40 litre. churn to the chilling centre.

In Karve district a woman carries milk to a collection point. Ponies,

The rather sombre looking  Uchit Rai shows us his ginger crop.

A much more animated shot with some of the vegetables he also grows.   Milk and ginger production are his first step out of subsistence farming, and a move towards the governments aim of commercialisation.

 

 But there lies the rub. For all you non farming types, cows get milked twice a day and so there milk needs to be chilled both evening and morning. Some chilling centres have opened their doors for milk chilling in the afternoon. Yet distance precludes many farmers who have to do the best they can and allow milk to cool naturally overnight to be mixed with the morning milk. The safety of this practise is even more doubtful when the ambient air temperature could be over 30c. So milk quality is an issue and the resulting dairy products such as milk, curd and cream are only given a shelf life of 2 days!!!

A Tanahau district milk producer gets her afternoon milk weighed before being chilled at a farmer owned milk chilling centre. The milk is sampled for fat and solid not fat, which in this district form the basis for payment. In other districts payment is based entirely on fat percentage.

 

Despite all these problems, which make any issues that their UK counterparts may have, pale into total insignificance, there is an ever growing demand for dairy products in Nepal. The work of the processors creating markets and building small milkpowder producing plants has taken away the threat of ‘milk holidays’, during which processors did not want milk. This more predictable market place has given farmers like Uchit new confidence. A thirst for new ideas and sustainable production boosting knowledge now exists and I guess some recommendations  from our Team may refer to quenching this thirst.

Ilam’s milk cooperatives are however breaking other new ground. Faced with 4 young men who wanted to follow many of their contemporaries and migrate abroad for work, they dipped into their funds, supplied cows and buildings to set them up as dairy farmers. That was 7 months ago and now the milk is flowing, cows look well and are back in calf but the lack of knowledge is holding their embryonic enterprise back. Their practices are still based on tradition rather than sound science.  Not surprisingly  their cooperative have done the easy part by providing funds, but have not developed a  mechanism for building the knowledge of these new dairy industry entrants. 



The four young farmers crowd around one of their cows. They are keen and doing a great job.

 

Let’s finally go full circle and return to the Broom plant. Cow’s milk under normal circumstances can be expected to have a fat content of 4%. Or as one market focused farmer friend always put it ---96% fat free!!. Milk produced by cows in Ilam can be as low as 3.1% which is pretty catastrophic when milk price is calculated on fat content. I strongly suspect that the oily leaves of the Broom plant play a part in this scenario. What can be done about it? In search of support, and to have a few thoughts confirmed, I’ve contacted my old adviser back in the UK, Paul Henman of Promar International, with whom I’ve discussed a few other dairy related problems in recent weeks. He has spent time in India so knows the challenges. We are still turning the issues over. The prize, if we find a feasible sustainable solution, could be a 20% rise in the milk price for Uchit and other remote tea garden farmers.