Bottles of milk are seen on the production line at a Dairy Farmers processing facility. (Photo : REUTERS)
The massive downturn in milk prices is a significant problem for dairy farmers, many of whom resorted to slaughtering their herds. The Chinese government launched a new program in Ningxia to ease the predicament of the most hard-hit dairy farmers.
The Chinese government provided a new opportunity to help Ningxia dairy farmers to survive the massive downturn in milk prices. Under this new program, farmers can draw rent from the animals without being compelled to kill their herds.
Many of the small-scale dairy farmers resorted to this unfavorable practice just to survive when the downturn in milk prices affected their livelihood.
According to Wu Yanhu of the animal husbandry station in Ningxia, farmers have several advantages under the program. First, they do not have to worry about rising milk prices. Second, the milk that their cows would produce on the large-scale farms is more likely to be of higher quality.
"We do cellular testing on the conditions of both the cows and the milk they produce. We've found that cows belonging to private farmers lag behind due to the tougher environment the cows are raised on, as well as a lack of proper breeding skills," he said. This is one of the prime reasons why milk from independent producers are harder to sell too.
According to Yan Jianguo, the president of a Chinese dairy producer, "we like to buy milk from pastures which have between one to three thousand cows. This way we know the pasture is our base throughout the entire management chain, from feeding to milking to the pasteurization of the milk. We are in charge of it all."
The Ningxia government also plans to allocate to the the local dairy farmers 90 million yuan in order to improve their competitiveness.
