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AT
first, it may look ridiculous for Ben Molina to go back
to the traditional pasturing of cows. However, he is
confident that with 300 cows grazing in a leased farm in
Tiaong, Quezon using the New Zealand pasture-based
technology, he is guaranteed P12 million in net income
annually. Mang Ben, as he is known to his farmhands, is
really no stranger to dairy milk production. As an
Oman-based agriculture expert, he has gained
international recognition for his success in training
Arabs in animal husbandry and dairy farming in the
Middle East.
Now that
he is back in the country, Molina never had second
thoughts when he decided to venture into dairy farming.
“I just want to earn and at the same time encourage
local producers to seriously look at the possibility of
reversing the sad state of our country’s dairy
industry,” he says.
When
Molina was interviewed for this article, there was no
issue yet about the hazardous effects of melamine in
China-made powdered milk that has triggered a global
market scare. Melamine does not dissolve easily and can
accumulate in the kidneys, cause renal failure in the
long run that can prove to be fatal.
Even
then, without the contamination scare from melamine, he
was already deeply concerned about our heavy dependence
on imported milk products even when there are abundant
pasture lands all over the country.
Measly
domestic production
Our
domestic production is also less than 5 percent of the
much-needed domestic demand of 2.4 billion kilos, making
the country heavily dependent on imported milk.
Last
year alone, the country imported 381 million kilos, with
the major suppliers coming from New Zealand, United
States, Australia and Malaysia.
Worse,
the National Dairy Authority (NDA) has listed only
15,000 milking heads as being the source of local dairy
industry. As a result, the country’s annual total
domestic production has been placed at only 13 million
kilos, accounted for mostly by local dairy cooperatives.
In neighboring Thailand alone, one big cooperative
actually produces as much as one million kilos daily.
MNCs use
imports
Even
home-grown multinational milk companies have stopped
using locally produced milk, finding it more convenient
to pass off as fresh bottled milk processed powdered
milk coming from major dairy exporting countries.
But if
the proper technology is used in boosting the country’s
dairy farming, the return on investment for the
producer, whether big or small, is guaranteed in less
than three years, says Molina, who completed a college
degree in animal husbandry at the Gregorio Araneta
University (now De la Salle-GAUF) and later, a master’s
degree in agriculture at the Melbourne University in
Australia.
According to Molina, our farmers have ignored the vast
tracts of pasture lands available to them, compared to
New Zealand which has become the dairy capital in this
part of the world simply because it used pasture-based
technology.
Molina
doesn’t recommend the traditional “cut-and-carry system”
where grass is harvested for feeds for cattle raised in
fenced farms. Although commonly practiced in the United
States, Europe and even in Australia, this approach
failed to maximize milk production in the Philippines
since local farmers suffer from an off-and-on feed
supply.
Batangas
venture bears fruit
Molina
found an initial breakthrough when he and his son
ventured into dairy farming in Batangas using the
pasture-based technology. They found that given the
right area for pasturing, they can produce as much as 15
liters per head daily.
Of their
78 female cows, only 30 heads are being milked at
present, but they can produce between 300 liters and 400
liters a day. By December, he says they could yield an
average of 800 liters daily, since all of the remaining
cows would already be pregnant by then, and would be
producing milk by that time.
Female
cows can produce milk from seven to 10 years. Usually,
they get pregnant again after three months and are ready
to give birth on the eighth month. During pregnancy, the
milking cows are only spared two months before they give
birth.
Self-sufficiency by 2018
With his
initial success, Molina decided to collaborate with the
NDA, which is targeting self-sufficiency in milk
production by 2018, now that government has found that
milk importation is not just costly, but could even pose
risks to health.
Through
NDA’s assistance, Molina is acquiring at least 200 cows,
which he intends to raise in Tiaong, Quezon, where he
has already set up his own milk production area.
Molina
says imported cows are usually two-and-a half to three
years old when they are brought to the country, with the
female already four to five months pregnant. After three
months, they are ready to give birth and produce milk.
For the
first year, each head produces at least 7 liters of milk
daily, but this increases to 10 liters on the second
year. The fresh milk is sold at farm-gate price of
market P20 per liter. It is then processed and sold at
P60 per liter.
Rene de
Guzman, the NDA’s planning manager, says that Molina is
just their only so-called “cooperator.” They need at
least nine other partners who are willing to go into
full-time pasturing to jump-start entrepreneurial dairy
farming. But they are convinced that the New Zealand
pasture-based technology can help reverse the trend n
the local dairy industry.
In the
past, he says local entrepreneurs had ignored the dairy
industry since they consider its investment requirements
too high. He admits that purchasing the cows alone from
New Zealand can be expensive. They used to buy the
animal at P50,000 way back in the 1990s. Now the price
has doubled for the crossbreed variety of the Holstein
breed and the Sahiwal, a tropical beeder.
Yet, he
says, given the increasing demand for milk, the NDA can
guarantee the producers profit from their investment.
Public-private partnership
Right
now, De Guzman says that government is taking the lead
in developing the dairy industry but needs the
participation of private sector. For one, NDA’s budget
has been pegged at P52 million for the past five years.
It was only this year that the agency managed to get an
additional P50 million, making it possible for the
agency to initially purchase 300 heads from New Zealand.
If the
government wants to attain its target self-sufficiency
liquid milk production by 2018—which means generating
from 56 million kilos to 63 million kilos, De Guzman
says they have to infuse at least 11,000 dairy animals
for the next five years. The NDA, along with the
Philippine Carabao Center in Nueva Ecija and the Bureau
of Animal Industry, have prepared a consolidated plan
for the country’s dairy industry.
In the
region, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
recently noted that mirroring price developments of the
major agricultural commodities, dairy products prices in
July 2008 remain approximately 60 per cent above
historical levels.
“While
the sudden increase in dairy prices certainly took the
market by surprise in late 2006, it should be viewed as
an opportunity for producers in developing countries,
particularly in Asia and Africa, to benefit from
structural changes in the global market place for dairy
products,” according to FAO in its August 2008
Asia-Pacific Food Update.
FAO said
that both milk production and consumption growth in Asia
has also been the strongest in the world. Nearly 80
percent of the 238 million tons of milk produced in 2007
was also supplied by smallholder dairy producers with
anywhere from one and five cows.
“These
tens of millions of households all over the breadth of
Asia are some of the poorest in the world, in many cases
landless, but they hold the capacity to respond quickly
to economic signals, specifically to higher prices,” the
FAO report said
Malunggay for cows
Right
now, Molina is encouraging the planting of malunggay in
pasture areas, if only to follow the Nicaraguan
experience where farmers were able to increase their
milk yield by 45 per cent by feeding their heads with
moringa –popularly known here as malunggay.
He says
malunggay can be intercropped with fruit-bearing trees,
but he recommends coconut since the mango or other
common fruit trees completely shade the ground when they
are already full grown. This deprives the grass of the
sunlight it needs to multiply.
Molina
says it is not really difficult to raise cows in the
country with the abundance of grass all year long. What
the farmers needs to know is the proper management of
the land for pasture using the rotation system, he says.
For one
paddock, Molina says it would be advisable to maintain
them in the same area from 21 days to 30 days, before
they are transferred to another area. “That’s why we
don’t really have a problem feeding them. I’d call it a
bottomless supply of grass,” he says.
For his
Tiaong farm, Molina says he has invested almost P1
million for equipment. He also leased the pasture land
at P5,000 per hectare per year. That, he says, is just
equivalent to a rent of P4 per head per day.
According to Molina, there is really no risk in milking
cows. With the shortage in supply, in his experience, he
just milks the cows and in the afternoon, wholesalers
would pick them up fresh from the farm. |
