HYDERABAD: Experts believe trade in camel milk, which is at present irregular and unsystematic, has a great potential for growth and urged the government to set up collecting points for camel milk to market this important product and empower camel farmers.

They were speaking at a two-day international symposium on ‘Camel management and reproduction’ which concluded at the Sindh Agriculture University (SAU), Tandojam, on Thursday. The symposium was jointly organised by the SAU and the Higher Education Commission.

Prof Dr Mushtaq Memon, who came from the United States, said the organising team of the symposium which visited camel habitat areas in the Achhro Thar area and held meetings with herders from other areas as well learned that there was a great need for collecting points for camel milk and marketing it as it did not have any system at the moment.

He said camel milk was being sold at Rs400 a kilo in cities like Karachi, while it was available at Rs50 only in the camel habitat areas. The problem was that there was no system to store the milk and enable the herders to earn more profits, he said.

If they could store it, the herders might keep outstanding camel breeds, which had potential for producing more milk but due to a lack of milk market system in the desert area, they did not take the risk of keeping such breeds in their areas, he said. The symposium urged research on viral respiratory syndrome, zonotic disease and brucellosis, which might hinder productivity of camels, and courses on camel breeding to create new avenues for livelihood improvement.

SAU VC Mujeeb Memon urged in his concluding remarks the academia and researchers to transfer knowledge to camel herders for imp­roving their socioeconomic conditions.

The experts urged strengthening public-private partnership to benefit camel herders and recommended that rural women in Sindh who were already involved in camel milking should be trained and the milk should be marketed through value chain approach.

They said that since Sindh had a lot of potential to produce camel meat and milk, farmers from coastal and desert areas, especially those living in Thar, Nara and Kohistan should benefit from the camel management technology.

Herders, hailing from the camel habitat areas in the country and abroad, like Bernd Hoffmanm from Germany, Raza Kakar from the UAE, Ghous Bhakhsh Issani, Dr Abdullah Areejo, and others also spoke at the symposium.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2015