JOIN USIt has seen crop holidays by farmers. There had even been a ‘power holiday’ for small and medium industries. Now, Andhra Pradesh is bracing for ‘milk holiday’, thanks to the excess production.
Aiming to cut down the surplus production, The AP Dairy Development Cooperative Federation (APDDCF) has declared milk holidays twice a month.
Despite crores of investment to make dairy sector a viable alternative to agriculture in the state, authorities have failed to come up with a strategy to create value addition.
With insufficient processing facilities adding to the crises, the milk holiday to stop production at least twice a month seems the only way out for the Federation to defuse the crises.
Every day, APDDCF is left with an additional 1.70 lakh litres of milk, but has no facilities to process it.
By declaring holidays twice a month, the federation hopes to get a breather to attend to the storage problems and also cut down the rising cost of procurement.
The last time the Federation declared a milk holiday was in 1993. According to the Federation, per day procurement shot up from 3.90 lakh litres in August to 4.69 lakh litres in September.
It touched 5.27 lakh litres in October and 5.93 lakh litres in November. In December, milk procurement is projected at 6.29 lakh litres.