The story
In the early 1980s, Kerala was seen as an unfriendly dairy state and had to depend primarily on the neighbouring states for its milk supply. However, today, Kerala is almost self-sufficient in milk production.
Established in 1980 as the implementing agency for Operation Flood II in the State of Kerala.
The Organisation has a three-tier structure with the primary milk Cooperative societies at the village level, Regional Milk Producers' Unions at the middle level and an apex body at the State level, which is the Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. There are three Regional Cooperative Milk Producers' Unions operating at present. The revenue districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, and Pathanamthitta come under the jurisdiction of the Thiruvananthapuram Regional Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (TRCMPU), the districts of Ernakulam, Thrissur, Kottayam and Idukki under the Ernakulam Regional Cooperative Milk Producers' Union (ERCMPU) and the six northern districts of Palakkad, Kannur, Malappuram, Kozhikkode, Wayanad and Kasaragod under the Malabar Regional Cooperative Milk Producers Union (MRCMPU). The three-tier structure ensures that the farmer members are directly responsible for policy-level decisions for the marketing of their produce.
The farmer memberships, which stood at 45,000 during the takeover of dairies from the erstwhile Kerala Livestock Development & Milk Marketing Board in 1983, has grown to over 9.0 lakhs (approximately 3 Lakhs pouring members) through 3,600 milk Cooperatives by the end of 2017–18. Similarly, milk procurement has shown phenomenal growth from 52,000 litres per day in 1983 to over 12,25,000 litres per day in 2017–18.
Keeping pace with the development of milk procurement and sale, Milma has concentrated on infrastructural development with financial assistance from the National Dairy Development Board, Swiss Development Cooperation and other agencies. Currently, there are 13 milk processing plants with a combined processing capacity of 12.50 lakh litres per day, with further expansion envisaged and 8 Milk Chilling Plants scattered across the State. A Milk Powder Plant has a capacity for producing 10 MT of milk powder per day, and two cattle feed plants, one at Pattanakkad (300 MTPD) and the other at Malampuzha (300 MTPD). The Pellet cattle feed manufactured in these plants is well accepted by the Dairy farmers and in the open market.
K S Mani is the Chairman of Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (MILMA).
From Wikipedia’s article on Kerala Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4