The Odisha State Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation (Omfed) has a target to collect an average of 5, 90,000 kg per day from farmers during the current year against 5, 26,000 kg collected per day during last year.
Fisheries and Animal Development Minister Pradeep Maharthy informed this in the Assembly in response to a question of BJP MlA Dilip Ray on Wednesday.
He said the Omfed collected an average 5,13,035 kg milk in April 2016 and would collect more during the coming rainy season. Informing that the Omfed had collected 82,000 kg milk more in 2015-16 compared to 2014-15, the Minister said the milk major of the State had faced a problem to market the excess milk. But keeping interest of farmers, the Omfed converted milk to milk powder at its own plant and at plants outside the State. The Omfed suffered a loss of Rs 10 for each litre of milk sent outside.
Now, the Omfed is sending excess milk to Nalanda Dairy in Bihar for making milk power. As in the first week of April 2016, the Nalanda Dairy developed technical snag, the Omfed had asked Cuttack and Puri Milk Societies not to sent 1,76,000 litres abd 55,000 litres, respectively, to the Bhubaneswar Diary. But after a week, the problem was solved and the two societies are now sending their all collected milk to the Omfed.