Sri Lanka’s business-like army moves into dairy farming

The Sri Lankan army, involved in business and economic activity since the May 2009 end of the conflict, is aiming to be one of the country’s largest milk producers.

As it expands its contribution to GDP growth – not through salaries, wages and expenditure on military hardware but real economic activity, the army has es- tablished its own Directorate for Agriculture and Livestock to promote agriculture and dairy industry, official sources said.

This department is currently negotiating with an investor to import 10,000 cows with the capacity to produce 60 litres of milk per cow per day, from an Australian company, the sources said.

A comprehensive plan has been crafted to increase milk produc- tion at its Kandakadu Agriculture Farm in Welikanda spanning over 11,140 acres and transforming it to become the biggest farm in South Asia. The milk production would be made available to MILCO for distribution.

Amidst the controversy last year, spilling into 2014, of contaminated milk from imported products, a campaign was launched to increase local milk production to reach self-sufficiency, and the army’s effort is in line with the national plan.

Sri Lanka annually requires around 900 million litres of milk but has the capacity to produce only 300 million litres, just 25-30 per cent of the total need. This is despite 30 per cent of the workforce of Sri Lanka being engaged in animal farming,

The milk food import bill costs US$400 million (or more than Rs. 49 billion) a year and the government’s plan is to attain self-sufficiency in milk by 2016. Several initiatives been directed towards this target through government and private sector efforts.

The army’s latest initiative is commensurate with its role of changing the landscape of Colombo and suburban areas and other cities including Kandy as well as entry into the hospitality and tourism sectors with the advantage of cheap labour and skills of security forces personnel. While there has been some criticism of the army’s role in business and allied activity particularly since it provides stiff competition to others which offer more costly services, the military hierarchy

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