Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: The Orissa state cooperative milk producers’ federation limited (OMFED) has decided to establish a 3 lakh litre-capacity plant here to resolve the problems being faced by milk farmers in the state.
Agriculture, farmers’ empowerment, fisheries and animal resource development minister Pradeep Maharathy has said at the secretariat the plant is expected to be built at Arilo under Govindpur mouza in Bhubaneswar.
About 50 acre land has been purchased in this connection, Maharathy said and added that the plant will help generate 3 lakh litres of milk daily. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is expected to provide a support of `300 crore to the project.
The present milk production capacity of Omfed is 5.51 lakh litre. The milk producers in the state generate surplus milk and are not in a position to sell their produce. The new plant, however, will be able to absorb the surplus milk produced from the local dairy farmers, he added.
Notably, several protesting milk farmers poured hundreds of litres of milk on a road in front of the collectorate at Puri April 20 in protest against the alleged anti-farmer policies of the state government.
The agitating farmers demanded a minimum procurement price of `30 per litre of milk from the Omfed and inclusion of milk in the mid-day meals of schoolchildren among other things. The cooperative milk federation had stopped procuring milk from a few societies citing poor quality of milk as Omfed had recently decided to procure milk above 29-point density. However, Omfed used to procure milk within a range of 24 to 29-point density in the lactometer test.