ALL major urban centres face the problem of supply of milk for residents at an affordable price and only a few, such as cities contiguously located with large villages have been able to successfully resolve the issue, most of them are constantly haunted by limited supply and escalating prices. However, hardly any place has been as badly hit by this regrettable phenomenon as Karachi. This is adversely affecting public health and subjecting many citizens to a financial burden they can ill afford.
The country’s biggest urban centre has had a chronic shortage of milk and its citizens have been forced to pay a prohibitive price per litre that is considerably more than what people have to dish out anywhere else.
This is bad enough but the situation gets more compounded when you realize that things would remain unchanged because the plight and woes of the people either go unnoticed and unheard or the managers of city and livestock sector have nothing to offer to the beleaguered residents of Karachi.
The issue is difficult to resolve because the city has no livestock breeding rural periphery. The population around Karachi mostly comprises fishermen; if there are any milk and meat animals, their produce is short of the requirements even of villagers; meeting Karachi’s needs even by a single digit percentage is beyond them.
Most other urban habitats have been better off because of close location of large villages of breeders who maintain regular supply of milk for residents because this serves their ends too by providing them easily and instantly accessible market for a perishable produce. Karachi is however cut off by a large distance from rural areas.
Moreover, rural areas of Sindh have a different pattern of population. The ‘goths’ (villages) are small sized with only a few families residing in one goth; the number of animals owned by them is consequently limited. The goths are located at distances from each other and from urban centres.
That makes milk collection in Sindh cumbersome, expensive and non-feasible. That is the reason why dairy farming has not been established in Sindh along professional lines and has been the main limitation in providing milk to Karachi at a reasonable rate.
However, as a big market for milk existed, enterprising individuals and groups from the breeder’s tribes found a way of serving and exploiting it. Buffalo colonies were soon established around the city and they are the ones that have been catering to the needs of Karachi.
But their supply of milk animals was not based on breeding but on purchasing milk animals from the hinterland in Punjab. Their purpose was served only with the best high yield stock; they came expensive.
Not only were animals priced high, their feed also had to be expensive because buffalo colonies have no grazing facilities. The quantity of milk produced by a buffalo is not linked with the quantity of its feed intake; it is the same for both.
The cost of grazing and green fodder is about one third of the high protein diet provided to animals in the barns. That automatically enhanced the cost of milk production and had to be reflected in the sale price per litre.
The margin of profit may have been high but conditions ruled out the possibility of milk supply to Karachi on the same rates as prevailed elsewhere in the country. The result has been the residents ending up paying more.
High yield or best elite buffaloes were purchased by milk suppliers of colonies around Karachi from Punjab, the province from where gowalas hailed. The price of an elite buffalo was around Rs 25,000 till about five year back. It has gone up to amounts between Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000 since then.
That has been reflected in the price of milk per litre in Karachi. Then animal’s price plus the cost of high protein feed served to animals in the barns has been instrumental in raising price of milk per litre.
While residents of Karachi had to bear this burden, the system has seriously damaged the livestock wealth of the country too. That would, in time, trigger a crisis for the livestock sector.
Normally, breeders revert to using animals for carving once the milking period of the animal is over. But the gowalas who purchased animals for milk supplies were not interested in breeding and offered the animals for slaughtering once their own ends were fulfilled.
As a result, the number of elite animals in the country has been shrinking. This is bound to undermine Pakistan’s milk production capacity. We currently claim to be fifth highest producer of milk in the world.
This needs to be verified but that is another issue. However, there is no denying the fact that the country has tremendous livestock wealth and produces quite a quantity of milk. This stands endangered by some of the current practices.
If the slaughtering elite animals continues, the situation would be changed to the detriment of the country’s livestock resources and exports based on animal hides. Pakistan, in short, would be heading for milk shortage, if a solution is not found for protecting elite animals.
As it is, such animals are already in short supply. About ten litres per day yield qualifies a buffalo for membership of the elite club in the not too distant past. Scales have been lowered to about eight litres per day for this status. That has been instrumental in raising the cost of high yield animals.
Milk suppliers of Karachi have no interest in purchasing low yield animals because their feed requirements would be the same as they are for higher yield stock. This means they would go on purchasing expensive animals and maintaining them on high protein diet.
The vicious circle of limited supply, high price of milk and slaughter of quality animals would go on turning more and more vicious with time. This is obviously to the detriment of all concerned. But emerging from this circle is not impossible.
First, the government of Sindh has to evolve a reliable method for milk collection from the scattered goths in the interior of the province. The failure of Karachi milk plant should have been an eye opener for makers and implementers of policies.
The plant could not be run efficiently because the management, enthusiastic about replicating Idara-e-Kisan in Lahore and Islamabad ignored basic differences in the supply system and demographic pattern of villages in the two provinces.
Punjab has large villages with households of 200 and above. Most villages are located near big cities. Collection of milk from these points is easily manageable because each village has a few hundred animals and offers a sizable quantity of milk. Short distances protect the quality of this perishable commodity.
Sindh has a totally different pattern that makes milk collection difficult and uneconomical. An indigenous system and infrastructure for milk collection that takes local difficulties in to account, needs to be evolved.
This is a long-term way out. For immediately providing relief to the citizens of Karachi, feed mills for producing high protein diet need to be set up. That should help lower the cost of milk to some extent.
But these are makeshift measures. What is really required is promoting breeding in Sindh and ensuring a fair deal for breeders and, at the same time, providing relief to citizens.
