Pelwatte Dairy contributes to improve socioeconomic status of local dairy farmers
Leading local dairy milk producer, Pelwatte Dairy Industries Ltd has taken steps to uplift and empower the local dairy farmers and small holders through multiple socio-economically empowering avenues rendered through the company’s dairy services and extension field team.
“Many dairy manufacturing companies opt not to purchase milk produce during the rainy season, where the scalability of yogurt sales depletes. Pelwatte Dairy Industries maintains that, despite varied climatic conditions, their commitment to uplift the livelihoods of the dairy farmers is of utmost importance. Which is categorically the main reason for Pelwatte Dairy Industries to continue to purchase milk from the farmers, regardless of the seasonal turbulences,” said Ariyaseela Wickramanayake, Chairman, Pelwatte Dairy Industries in a media release.
Currently, the dairy company purchases from a pool of over 10,000 dairy farmers and the network continues to grow. Pelwatte Dairy Industries asserts to keep on promoting the local dairy industry and enriching the lives of the local dairy farmers.
Another important venture of Pelwatte Dairy Industries is their initiative on training and knowledge sharing with the local dairy farmers on important facets of dairy farming. This includes areas such as cultivation of fodder grasses, forage and silage. Undoubtedly, knowledge and understanding on these factors are essential, in terms of providing a balanced high energy diet to the milking cows. This would in turn improve the per cow yield and productivity.
“Our purpose through the whole process of heralding best and latest practices of modern day dairy farming industry to the local farmers, be it breeding, milking, reproduction or husbandry; is to ensure farmers are transferred the benefit of high ROI, with lower production costs, and enhanced productivity,” he said.
Pelwatte conducts regular training camps at its Training and Development farm in Buttala. The in-house training provides lodging and transportation for the farmers. Thus, the company takes care of the whole process of enabling the dairy farmers to gain best training and knowledge sharing opportunities. The company vouches that their business model gives same levels of leverage to large scale farmers as well as small scale farmers, as such there is no demarcation on the training opportunities provided to those who farm 2 to 3 cows to those who can farm 50 cows.
The release said that the ideology behind the training process of the dairy farmers for the Pelwatte Dairy Industries is that it would in turn pave the way for the farmers to supply high quality and concentrated feed based on their animal feed plant, which can boost the output of the dairy cows.
To strengthen the initiative of uplifting the socio-economic statues of the local dairy farmers, the company recently opened four new milk collection centres in Haputale, Ambagasdowa, Maoya and Padaviya. As of now the company has 40 milk collection centres across the island. These centres benefit the famers, with hassle free and timely handing over of the collected milk, which eliminates the inconveniences faced by the farmers in remote areas such as Nuwara Eliya, Haputale, Hatton, Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, North West region etc.