By Hillary Asemota
As part of entrenchment of the development culture in the agro-dairy sector for food security across the country, the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP) has held a high impact sensitization workshop on dairy development for a cross section of farmers/entrepreneurs in Kwara State.
The high impact workshop was packaged by NOTAP for the North-central after hosting a similar one in Kano, representing the North-west.
While declaring the event open in Ilorin, the Director General of NOTAP, Dr. DanAzumi Mohammed Ibrahim, represented by the Director Consultancy Services of NOTAP, Dr. Adamu Tandama acknowledged that Nigeria is blessed with high number of cattle but due to the nomadic way of life, Nigerian Cows yield small quantity of milk.
Mr. Raymond Onyenezi Ogbu, in a statement he signed on behalf of Mr. Solomon Nshem, Head of Corporate Communication for the agency, quoted the DG as saying that the situation was further compounded by poor and inadequate knowledge on the modern techniques of cow breeding.
He said that Vietnam and Netherlands that are the highest producers of milk may not have the number of Cows Nigeria has but they apply the global best practices in cattle breeding to ensure high milk yield.
He added that technology is what rules the world and for Dairy entrepreneurs to develop their business to the point of producing enough milk for the Nigerian market, they must adopt the modern methods of ranching, breeding and cow milking.
The Director General noted that Cows that produce enough milk are ranched in a center where they are well fed with adequate hygiene assured. He advised the Dairy entrepreneurs to form corporate societies and groups as history has shown that the level of success for individual Dairy entrepreneurs/farmers is far less than when they form groups.
He further stated that the reason for the workshop was to sensitize Dairy farmers on the best global practices in Dairy production as well as introduce them to the use of high breed Cows for Dairy business that are higher in milk yield than the local Cows that we have in the country.
The NOTAP boss further stated that in order to ensure technology transfer and global best practices in dairy production, the Office in 2013 opened partnership with FrieslandCampina WAMCO who established mini milk collection centers in Ibadan, Oyo State.
He added that the company built a settlement for the Fulani herders, ranched their Cows and introduced them to the modern methods of growing Cows and milking processes which has turned to a lucrative business for even the non-Fulanis around the locality.
He said the project was introduced as a result of NOTAP’s collaboration with FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria plc in order to add local content to milk produced in Nigeria and also ensure availability of milk for our teeming population.
During the technical session, the participants were introduced to the key elements of entrepreneurship which will be a guide for high success rate in their businesses as well as the modern techniques in product marketing. The participants were taught that marketing of products was an essential aspect of business as goods produced without buyers, especially perishables, will put the entrepreneur out of business through losses.
