FrieslandCampina WAMPCO empowers 9000 dairy farmers, set to improve local milk sourcing
FrieslandCampina WAMPCO Nigeria has reaffirmed its commitment to partnering with the federal government through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to build capacity, policies and practices to improve local milk sourcing.
The dairy food giant disclosed this on its LinkedIn official handle while marking ten years of introducing Dairy Development Programme (DDP) in the Nigerian market.
The company disclosed that through DDP (a programme aimed to improve quality of milk, increase productivity per cow and support farmers in gaining access to market), over 9000 Nigerian farmers have been enabled to not only run their businesses efficiently but also improve the quality of their dairy production.
In addition, the company has built four master farms within the FDOV (program aimed to stimulate public/private partnerships that enhance food security in developing countries) in Nigeria. This new concept of nomadic farming enables each master farmer to maintain ten cows, bringing the total to forty cows.
The report noted that over the past decades, DDP trained member dairy farmers from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, have improved their skills, rapidly modernised their farms and adopted methods around sustainable and efficient farming processes.
The report added that more than 250, 000 dairy farmers have benefited directly or indirectly since the commencement of the programme in the 1980s. About 77.934 farmers from Nigeria and seven other countries, including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Thailand and Vietnam are among beneficiaries of the training programme.
For female farmers in Nigeria and Pakistan, DDP ran a special empowerment programme aimed at achieving gender equality to support women in becoming better farmers by providing them tailored trainings on technical, leaderships, and entrepreneurial skills.
The DDP programme, the report said, strongly aligns with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals initiative.
“In order to achieve those goals, we focus on training, knowledge partnerships and projects aimed at improving the dairy farming infrastructure, such as the upgrading of milk collection centres. In this way, we contribute to food security, a more sustainable milk production and raising the living standards of the dairy farmers participating in the programme.
“In addition to training, partnerships and projects the DDP contributes to maintaining and improving relationships with local authorities and stakeholders. In that way, we can empower our initiatives,” the report said.
Every year about 500 stakeholders reportedly visit the Netherlands for Grass2Glass study visits, which gives them the opportunity to get familiar with the full supply chain processes of FrieslandCampina.
“One of the unique aspects of the DDP is that the knowledge sharing is often done with the help of our own employees and member dairy farmers. We arrange that through expert missions and Farmer2Farmer missions. One of the most valuable parts of the missions is that local farmers can directly implement the knowledge they receive under the supervision of our experts and ask them for further guidance and hands-on assistance,” the report concluded.
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