Small-scale farmers, pastoralists and vendors are doing an amazing job of supplying the growing markets for dairy in the South. The problem is that corporate interests are after these same markets and they are using heavy tactics to steal them from the poor, while governments are lending a helping hand.
Financial investors and big dairy corporations are joining forces to set up mega dairy farms throughout the South. Cargill’s hedge fund is committing $300 million to factory dairy farms in China and India. The world’s biggest dairy cooperative, Fonterra, is building farms in China, India, and Brazil on a scale that it could never get away with in its home country New Zealand. A bank in Vietnam is building a 137,000 cow farm. These are social and ecological disasters that will bring hardship to millions of people.
Look, How corporations are stealing livelihoods and a vital source of nutrition from the poor, is available here
Dairy in countries like Pakistan and Uganda is almost entirely in the hands of the people’s milk sector
Response of Ilse Kohler Rollefson via email
“Here in Germany there is a huge dairy crisis, with many thousands of dairy farmers going out of business because production costs are much higher than income. It was the top news item a few days ago. There is a huge excess of milk that nobody knows what to do with.
I am just wondering about all the statements made in favour of “efficiency” and the supposed need for doubling global livestock production by 2050 “to feed the people in developing countriess.”
In actual fact the world seems to be flooded with both milk and cheap meat.
Much more important than raising production would be to develop systems that ensure rural livelihoods – to stop people having to migrate into cities.
But its an uphill climb to get that message across.