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Bring back the family cow !
Instead of quarrelling over whether the price-control of milk is justified or not, wouldn’t it be wiser to try and find ways and means to stop or minimize its importation? Couldn’t we become self-sufficient in this essential foodstuff? It is not such a far-fetched idea. Why can’t we seriously consider the setting up of a nationwide dairy industry? We have the potential in man-power and cow-rearing is not an unknown activity to many. Apart from saving millions in foreign currency, this could create thousands of jobs.
Many of us still remember the cool matha, the delicious fenous, the cocorni of our childhood when nearly every village household had its own cow. Besides providing the daily geelass/catori of fresh rich milk – probably the only balanced item of our meagre diet – the humble cow was an important source of revenue, saved cent by cent by our fathers, that later contributed to financing our education. Many of our senior MPs, doctors, magistrates and other members of the elite will concede — if they are capable of such humility — that they owe (if not wholly, at least, partly) their education and the position to the humble family cow their father owned.
But these, though facts, are today rather like nostalgic sentimentality than actual possibilities. We would indeed find it difficult to convince the younger generations, cultured as they are for white-collar jobs, to fetch grass, sweep the stable or milk the cow; nor are our fathers’ rudimentary rearing methods acceptable by our norms of hygiene.
But the same activity could be implemented on a modern, less individual-family scale. Cooperative dairy farms and a cooperative dairy industry could be the answer. 20-25 persons from each village could form a cooperative. By each holding a minimum of one Rs1000-share, they would have at least Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000 to start with.
The government could ask the DBM to institute a scheme for additional funding to these cooperatives/SMEs. On a regional basis, the government can put 1 to 2 arpents of land at their disposal. Alternatively, they could convert their own soon-to-become unprofitable 1-2 arpents of sugarcane land for this purpose.
Milk and other dairy products</B>
The ministry of Agro-industry could see to it that cow-sheds built to house 50-100 cows conform to modern standards of feeding, ventilation, light and drainage. The ministry could import heifers — the best milk-giving breeds adapted to our climate - and give or sell them at a nominal price. It could also provide free or at nominal cost veterinary and artificial insemination services.
The ministry could convert the ex-tea plantations into green fodder-producing fields. The lands could be leased to contractors (another way to absorb our unemployed). The Richelieu Animal Feed Section could process these products into bales of dry fodder for the off-season. The ministry’s (or contractors’) trucks could ensure distribution of green/dry fodder to the various cooperatives, again for nominal fees.
The ministry could contract scavenging companies on a weekly basis to clean the stables and empty the cess-pits. There could be a few centralized manure/compost-making plants on an industrial scale at these waste-depots. And why not bio-gas producing plants?
The ministry or the STC could buy and distribute/sell modern milking equipment to the cooperatives. Milk-collection could be undertaken by transport companies equipped with sterilised vats/containers.
The Government must encourage foreign investors, in partnership with Mauritians, with the necessary technical knowhow in dairy production. Milk collected would be pasteurized and packed for sale. Other dairy products like butter, cheese, yogurt, ect. could be produced
Hopefully such projects could even attract the younger generation. The mechanization of the process would assuredly prevent the “dirtying” of their hands ! If such a project is established on a nationwide basis, it could create 40,000 jobs in the various fields - from cow rearing, fodder production, scavenging, compost production to collection, distribution and dairy factory works.
I wish to underline that I have no academic or technical expertise on the subject. My suggestions, for what they are worth, come from just a layman’s common sense strengthened by my own experience of the old rudimentary method of cow-rearing. But I dare hope that they might spark some ideas in the thinking of those concerned, especially that of the minister of Agro-industry.
<B>Jagdish SEEBARUTH</B>
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