CHANDIGARH, JULY 4:In a bid to bring white revolution in the state, Chief Parliamentary Secretary Co-operation Mr. KD Bhandari asked the top brass of the MILKFED to herald a white revolution in the state.
In his maiden meeting to review the functioning of the MILKFED, Mr. Bhandari emphasized the need for a paradigm shift from traditional agriculture to dairy farming with the twin objective of improving the economic lot of the farmers besides producing high quality milk which would be further processed at the Milk Plants of MILKFED across the state to ensure its high profitability. He said scientific handling and processing of milk would certainly yield high profits and thus underscored the need to prepare a comprehensive plan for the modernization of plants to enhance their capacity. He said that concerted efforts should be made to make the existing milk plants in the co-operative sector economically viable and financially sustainable. Mr. Bhandari further said that these Milk Plants should be suitably upgraded by replacing the obsolete machinery and Infra structure with the latest one for enabling them to successfully compete with leading Milk processing units in the private sector. Highly appreciating the initiative taken by the Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal for strict implementation the National Dairy Plan (NDP), Mr. Bhandari hoped if implemented in the right earnest, it would benefit the farmers especially small and marginal because diversification of agriculture was the need of the hour and dairy farming was the most remunerative alternative to the conventional agriculture in term of wheat-paddy rotation due to low margin of profit. He also asked MILKFED to prepare a time bound plan to diversify its products range by developing new products besides chalking out a complete marketing strategy for its sale. Mr. Bhandari also asked the top management of the MILKFED to find ways and means to boost the export potential of milk products of marketed by MILKFED.
Taking part in the deliberations, MD of the MILKFED Mr. Balwinder Singh Sidhu apprised Mr. Bhandari that MILKFED had a network of 7370 villge level milk socities with 3.91 milk producers. He said MILKFED had fixed a target of 12 lac litre milk to be purchased daily during 2012-13.
Prominent amongst others who were present in the meeting included Financial Commissioner Mr. Viswajit Khanna and MD MILKFED Mr. Balwinder Singh Sidhu besides senior functionaries of the MILKFED.
