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Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh recently announced a Rs 215-crore project through the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) for Meghalaya Milk Mission for various training under dairy farm, chilling centre and purchase of cattle.
The minister stated that it would facilitate in achieving the Centre’s goal of doubling farmer’s income by 2022 through promotion of milk business in the state.
The project consists of 2,000 dairy farm units each with a provision for five cows, sheds, storage room, animal insurance, 79 bulk milk coolers of 500 litre capacity and 13 milk tankers of 3,000 litre capacity. There is also provision for Rs 1 crore for training farmers.
The mission aims at plugging the demand-supply gap in the per capita milk availability, which is much lower than the Indian Council of Medical Research’s recommendation of consumption per person.
The minister mentioned that there are cooperatives in only 97 villages out of the 6,449 villages of Meghalaya while there can be cooperative societies in 60 per cent of the total villages. Production is only 5 per cent of the demand.