By Pratik Ichchhuk Sharma
Salyan, Jan. 15: After the establishment of dairies and cooperatives in various places of the Salyan district, farmers there have been able to find a wide market for th eir milk and earn a decent living.
Having to sell milk used to worry Dilmaya Oli of Darma Rural Municipality-5. She had to roam from village to village and from market to market to find buyers for the dairy products she used to produce at home. But now, she sells it to her local cooperative. “The Women and Small Farmers Agriculture Cooperative that runs in our village has not only helped me but many other dairy farmers like me. It has inspired many to start keeping buffaloes,” she said. The cooperative collects around 400 litres of milk per day.
“The people of the district no longer face any difficulty in selling milk because of the annually by selling milk.
The milk produced here also gets exported to Surkhet and many other places outside the district. Prem Bahadur Dangi, manager of Jiwan Dairy in Tharmare, Bagchaur Municipality-2, informed that they sent 2,800 litres of milk out of the district on a daily basis. He shared that he had been earning Rs. 3 million from this business annually.
Kapil Prasad Upadhyaya, chief of the Livestock Services Office in Salyan, said that more than 500 farmers were engaged in dairy farming in the district. He also informed that there were 17 dairies operating in Salyan, along with six cold storages and two collection centres. The district’s daily milk output stands at 3,000 litres.
In order to increase milk production, the office has been providing farmers with improved breeds of buffaloes, grasses and various grants.