Dairy farmers pour milk on road

Allege cooperative societies has stopped milk collection without any prior notice

May 28, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:41 am IST - COIMBATORE:

On Wednesday, large number of farmers in Tirupur district poured milk into the open, near the Aavin plant at Veerapandi. They alleged that the cooperative societies through which Aavin procures milk from them has stopped the milk collection on Wednesday without any prior notice.

“Such sudden disruptions in the procurement have happened on many occasions in the recent weeks,” N. S. Palanisamy, State President of Non-Political Tamil Nadu Agriculturists Association, told presspersons.

When contacted, the Aavin General Manager (in-charge) A. Manavalagan told The Hindu that the farmers’ allegations of sudden disruptions and that too on many occasions, were totally false.

“There has been no procurement in Tirupur and its immediate suburbs only for Wednesday because of the shutdown of the two chilling units and five bulk milk coolers in area for maintenance of plant and machinery.

“The shutdown schedule was intimated to the farmers through the cooperative societies in advance,” he said.

In Salem, emotions ran high and sparks flew at the farmers’ grievances day last week as farmers protested against Aavin not procuring additional milk from them. District Collector K. Maharabushanam said that Tamil Nadu was facing a stiff challenge from Karnataka in supplying milk to Kerala. Karnataka milk is cheaper, as its transportation cost is lesser compared to that of Tamil Nadu.

Milk producers in Coimbatore said that increasing inflow of milk to Aavin due to increase in procurement price by Rs. 8 per litre in 2014 has diverted milk sold to private dairies to it. Further, recent showers facilitated green fodder growth, which resulted in increased milk production.

Former Chairman of Coimbatore District Milk Producers Union S.R. Rajagopal said that the factors resulted in backlog of 2.4 lakh litres milk in Coimbatore last weekend. Stoppage of milk procurement in turns started with returning 63,000 litres milk to farmers at societies attached to Annur on Sunday. It was followed by stoppage of procurement in Pollachi on Monday, Perur, on Tuesday and from Sultanpet and Tirupur on Wednesday.

The Coimbatore District Milk Producers Welfare Union made a representation to the State Government and Aavin stressing on the need to increase the capacity of existing Aavin dairies across the State.

 

While the Salem Aavin says that it has stepped up the daily milk production in the recent past, farmers in Salem accuse the Aavin of continuously acting against their interest.

The Tamil Nadu Milk Producers Welfare Association (TNMPWA) and other farmers’ organisations allege that Aavin continued to refuse to procure the additional milk from the farmers. They have no alternative other than selling additional milk too to the societies.

M. G. Rajendran, general secretary of the TNMPWA, and N. Perumal, president of the Salem District Farmers Association, allege that Aavin is of late adopting a technique returning back ten per cent of the milk supplied by the farmers giving lame excuses. For every litre of milk, the Aavin is returning back 100 ml to the farmers. Thus it is returning about 50,000 litres of milk every day to farmers in Salem district alone, they allege. And it is declaring milk holidays in primary societies, say farmers.

The need of the hour is improving the marketing strategy and setting up more milk powder manufacturing units, says Mr. Rajendran.

“We continue to receive the regular supplies. In the wake of the State government increasing the procurement price to Rs. 28 per litre of cow milk and Rs. 35 for buffalo milk, Aavin has been enforcing stringent quality norms; instruments for testing procedures have been set right at all the milk societies,” R. Sukumar, General Manager, Erode District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union (Aavin), said.

According to Ramasamy Gounder, Treasurer, Tamil Nadu Milk Producers' Welfare Association, the fall in the price of milk powder has, indeed, accentuated the crisis.

(with inputs from R. Vimal Kumar in Tirupur, Syed Muthahar Saqaf in Salem, M.K. Ananth in Coimbatore and R. Krishnamoorthy in Erode).

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