The Madhya Pradesh state cooperative dairy federation, which sells milk and products under the hugely popular ‘Sanchi’ brand, is seeking collaboration with the country’s biggest cooperative Amul for expanding its operations and boost procurement from the farmers, a senior state government official told FE.
The official said that currently out of the total milk production in the state, Sanchi procures only in the 20-25% of milk producing region. The collaboration with Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) will help the state cooperative to expand operations to other parts of the state.
MP is the third-biggest milk producing state in the country. Sanchi purchases one million litres of milk from farmers mostly in the western region of the state such as Indore, Ujjain and Bhopal.
“We are willing to learn from Amul’s experience and we are seeking training, skill and entrepreneurship development from them,” the official said while ruling out reports about the state cooperative being acquired by Amul.
Sanchi’s overall procurement of milk is now growing at 7-8% annually. It has six district unions – Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Bundelkhand, out of which Gwalior and Jabalpur are the unions where milk procurement has stagnated. Currently around 0.25 million farmers across 10,000 villages are associated with the Madhya Pradesh federation.
Earlier in the year, Mohan Yadav, Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh had participated in a meeting between Sanchi and Amul in Ahmedabad. The key objective was to increase the procurement of milk in the state and there was also discussion on Sanchi selling surplus milk procured daily to Amul for boosting farmers’ income.
The federation had earlier urged the state government to include milk in its mid-day meal and anganwadi schemes since it is receiving around 30% surplus milk daily.
The GCMMF has 18 district unions with a membership of more than 3.6 million dairy farmers in more than 18,600 villages in Gujarat. The leading dairy cooperatives procure an average 35 million litres of milk per day. Currently, around 60-65% of milk procurement by Amul is carried out in Gujarat and it is ranked as the eight-largest dairy organisation globally.
The milk production in Rajasthan was20.12 million tonnne (MT) in 2022-23 with the state contributing close to 9% of the country’s milk output of 230.57 MT. Uttar Pradeshand Rajasthan have share of 15.71% (36.24 MT) and 14.4% (33.3 MT) in the country’s milk output respectively.