DAIRY farmers in northern Lamphun province have been forced to dump raw milk after a private company stopped buying their produce due to consumers now switching to drinking imported powdered milk and a cabinet resolution prohibiting inter-provincial sales, TV Channel 3 Plus News said this morning (Apr. 26).
Mr. Kiatsak Moonphanatsak, 39, one of 32 dairy farmers in Mae Tha district, said he invested several million baht in raising dairy cows for around seven years. He had inherited this business from his parents.
In the beginning he sold milk at 22 baht a kilogramme to the district cooperative. This later changed with a company in Saraburi signing a contract with their cooperative to buy raw milk, but the firm stopped doing so from Apr. 1 because of the ban on inter-provincial milk sales and changing consumer preference.
The cooperative has been buying 11.7 tonnes of milk from its members a day at an approximately daily cost of 300,000 baht but will stop doing so from Apr. 29.
The farmers urged the authorities to find a new buyer for the milk.
At the moment, the cooperative is giving away free raw milk and interested parties can bring their own containers to take it. However as milk spoils unless it is refrigerated within two hours, this milk cannot be consumed only used for fertilizer.
Meanwhile Ms. Supisara Kanthimapong, an officer at the Milk Centre, said the cooperative’s 32 members have around 2,000 cows and after this they would suffer because they have to bear their own cost in raising the cows with there being no place to sell raw milk.
Sources said that private companies are not buying raw milk because aside from consumers switching to imported powdered milk, schools are currently shut and milk production companies have reduced output leading to a glut in the market.
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Dairy farmers in Lamphun draw attention to their plight by pouring raw milk on a road. Photo: TV Channel 3 Plus News
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