Dairy farmers have urged the Government to increase the farmgate price for raw milk.
At least two dairy farmers – Harvindar Singh of J Singh Dairy farm in Waimaro and Ravindra Prasad of Nandans Dairy Farm in Viria, Naitasiri said the Government should increase the farmgate milk price to around $1.50 to $1.80 a litre.
Mr Singh said his farm produced around 1300 litres of milk a day and received around $1.07 a litre after processing, which was not sufficient.
“It’s like we are spending a lot of money on calf milk replacers to speed our calves, whereas our fresh milk is sold at a cheaper price to the processor,” Mr Singh said in an interview.
“If you convert calf milk per litre, the calf powder costs the farmer more than what we are selling our fresh milk at.”
He said if the $4 million assistance offered through the Fiji Cooperative Diary Company Limited (FCDCL) is approved by the Government after the budget was passed, would be of a huge relief for the farmers.
“In that, we have planned to subsidise feed, subsidise calf milk for the baby calves that we have on our farm.
“If that comes in after the budget is passed, then perhaps we will see some money coming in.
“Then it makes our farm viable working for what we are doing, producing milk,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Prasad said their cows produced around 150-160 litres of milk every day.
He said they fetched around $1.12 a litre, which was not enough compared to the high operating costs.
“The feed has increased from $150 to $300 weekly, the fuel has increased from $100 to almost $200 weekly,” Mr Prasad told this newspaper in an interview on his Viria farm yesterday.
“We also repair the fence and posts after six months because it gets damaged and buy the grasses to feed.”
He said even though the Government had provided some assistance, particularly with the provision of milking machines, but added to relieve high costs pressures, it would still be better to increases the farmgate milk price.
