Chandigarh, February 28
While Punjab is paying the highest average price, Rs 16 per litre, the procurement of milk by Milkfed has gone up by about 30 per cent in the state. This was disclosed here today by cooperation minister Kanwaljit Singh.
He said Milkfed was procuring about 13 lakh litres of milk daily. “Our target is to raise the procurement to 15 lakh litres per day”, said Capt Kanwaljit Singh, who organised a workshop on enhancing the milk production in the state.
Experts from the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) spoke at the workshop. Senior officers of the Cooperative Department, including its secretary Kusamjit Sidhu, registrar cooperative societies, Viswajeet Khanna, managing director, Milkfed, V.K. Singh attended the workshop.
The minister said steps taken at
micro and macro levels to enhance the milk production had yielded results. “We had fixed a target to set up 100 dairy farms by March-end. However, we have achieved the target well in advance and expect to set up a total of 150 dairy within the target period. At such dairy farms, farmers are given loans to buy a minimum of 20 high-yielding milch cows”, he said.
“We are keen that farmers should come out of the traditional cropping pattern and usher into a new era.” “The union government kept Punjab farmers trapped in producing wheat and paddy and also did not give them remunerative prices of food grains over the years.
It followed a policy of price squeeze in case of farm produce. Consequently, the Punjab farmers were weakened economically”, he said.
The minister said a high-level committee had been set up to restructure Milkfed thoroughly and to corporatise the apex cooperative bodies like Milkfed and Markfed, etc. It has been told to complete its report within a month.
He said Verka products were in high demand in the country and abroad. Milk products worth Rs 15 crore were exported with overall profit of Milkfed standing at Rs 8 crore this year.
