Palakkad: The Malabar Regional Co-operative Milk Producers' Union of the Milma will resume procuring the entire milk produced in the region from Sunday.
Milma’s Malabar Union had on Tuesday last reduced the procurement of milk by 40 per cent, as the supply overshot the demand. It also stopped collecting milk in the afternoons.
The union decided to revoke its decision after a meeting its chairman K S Mani had with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and J Chinchurani, the Ministry for Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy Development, Milk Co-operatives.
The meeting assured Mani of government-level intervention to handle excessive milk collected. Additionally, Milma unions in Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram would procure additional milk from Malabar.
Factories in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka agreed to convert and provide 2.5 lakh litres of milk powder. Mani and union managing director Dr P Murali said steps would be initiated to supply excess milk through tribal areas, three-tier panchayats, and camps of guest labourers, old-age homes, COVID-19 hospitals and Anganawadis.
The union’s earlier decision to reduce the milk procurement had pushed dairy farmers in the region into a crisis.
The milk market showed a slight upward trend after people took up the ‘buy more milk’ challenge thrown in by the Malabar union and several other organisations. Malayala Manorama had published several reports and an editorial on the plight of dairy farmers.
