Fonterra Programme helps increase milk production amongst farmers in Hanwella
View(s):Dairy farmers taking part in the Fonterra Farmer Education and Training Programme have seen an average 42 per cent increase in milk production in just 12 months, leading to a 55 per cent average growth in farmers’ dairy income.
Fonterra Operations Director, Satish Karunakaran said the programme was developed using Fonterra’s generations of dairy expertise to help farmers produce more and higher quality milk.
A participating farmer family from the Fonterra Farmer Education and Training Programme working together on their farm.
“We’ve been operating in Sri Lanka for over 35 years and we want to give back to the local communities by sharing our expertise,” he said in a media release issued by Fonterra.
“The education programme focuses on productivity, milk quality and sustainability. Getting all of these factors right ultimately helps local farmers produce higher quality milk, and grow their overall income.”
One key area of the programme is teaching the farmers about nutrition. Traditionally cows have fed on paddy and roadside grass; however, farmers in the programme are now allocating five times more space in their gardens to grow CO3 grass, which is a type of grass that has higher nutritional value, the release said.
Fonterra Dairy Development Manager Jim Burrell said feeding cows grass with higher nutritional value has been a major driver behind this rise in production and also helps improve the overall health of the cow.
“Their cows are now eating better quality and more feed each day which has meant over half of the families now milk their cows twice a day, as opposed to an average of once a day.”
As part of the programme Mr Burrell and the programme’s executive Rajitha Jayasundara spend three days a week on each farm, working side by side with the dairy farmers to help them incorporate the new management practices that they have learnt into their daily routine.
Fonterra began collecting local milk in 1997 and currently collects around 30,000 litres of milk each day to produce fresh dairy products under the Anchor Newdale range such as set yoghurt, stirred yoghurt, UHT milk packets, curd, and stirred fruit yoghurt. The milk is delivered by farmers to collection centres in the Western, Central and North-Western Provinces.