BHOPAL: The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and the MP Dairy Federation signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Bhopal on Sunday, in the presence of Union Minister for Cooperation Amit Shah and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav. This agreement aims to expand, diversify, and modernize the cooperative dairy sector in Madhya Pradesh.
Addressing the state-level cooperatives conference thereafter, Shah said, “The MoU between the NDDB and the state dairy federation targets doubling milk collection by the state cooperative sector from the current 12 lakh litres to 24 lakh litres.”
“MP produces 5.5 crore litres of milk, which accounts for 9% of the country’s total milk output. However, less than 1% of milk comes from dairy cooperatives.
Even when it comes to surplus or marketable milk, which is left after domestic consumption, only 2.5% of 3.50 crore litres comes from dairy cooperatives. Only 17% of villages in MP have milk collection facilities. The MoU has created scope for increasing dairy cooperatives penetration to the remaining 83% villages,” Shah said.
Without naming the Congress regimes in the past at the Centre, Shah said that the cooperative movement had “almost died” in many states, as the existing laws remained unchanged to keep in sync with changing times.
Seventy-five years after the country’s independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi created a separate ministry for cooperation (cooperatives) at the centre. “In 3.5 years, we’ve worked to usher sea change, particularly by framing model bylaws to foster the growth of primary cooperative societies.”