EADD II - East Africa Dairy Development Phase II

MORE MILK, BETTER PRICES

It was only 11 a.m., but 18-year-old James was bone tired. He woke up at 5 a.m. to milk his cow, then set out to collect more milk from his neighbors. An hour later he was pushing the bike, its seatand baskets piled with 24 gallons of milk over the rutted dirt roads leading to the chilling plant of the Kiboga West Livestock Cooperative.

The 18-mile trek over hills and through the grassy pastures of the rural Kiboga region in central Uganda takes five hours, and James does it every single day.

A cement building housing a gleaming, pot-bellied cooler the size of a hippopotamus, the chilling plant was the most popular spot in Kyankwanzi village when James wheeled up. A pack of children, barefoot and dusty, laughed and chased each other in the street out front. A dozen men, each hoisting their own jerry cans and repurposed motor oil bottles full of milk, waited their turn in line. Like James, these farmers are members of the cooperative and bring their milk every day so it can be chilled and sold in bulk to a processor who will pasteurize and package it for sale. The Kiboga chilling plant is part of the East Africa Dairy Development project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and organized by a conglomeration of nonprofits including Heifer International. The goal of these cooperatives is to help farmers boost production and find a ready market for their milk.

Members were already taking advantage of an artificial insemination program aimed at improving milk production. Ankole [an-KOHL-ee], the longhorned local breed, is renowned for delicious meat, but it produces only about half as much milk as a Holstein. Farmers here are trying to marry the Ankole’s immunities to local diseases and fitness to the Ugandan environment to the productivity of western breeds.