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    Integrated Approach to Enhance Milk Quality, Dairy Animal Productivity, and Milk Consumption by Vulnerable Household Members in Rural Nepal

    • Research Project Location: Nepal
    • Timeframe: 2023 - 2025
    • Funding: USAID

    Introduction

    Improvements in dairy value chains do not always correspond with improvements in human nutrition. A multi-dimensional intervention that provides mobile phone-based decision tools for farmers, improved forage varieties for livestock, price bonuses at milk collection centers for quality milk, and dairy consumption behavior change supports for households will improve dairy production, quality, prices, and household consumption.

    The overarching project goal is to strengthen the dairy sector in Nepal through productivity and quality improvements, promoting farmer economic development, and increasing milk consumption by vulnerable household members.

    Project Objectives

    1. Improve productivity of dairy animals through enhanced access to technologies, farm management tools and increased feed and fodder supply
    2. Improve quality of milk via adoption of GHP through price incentives for farmers that stimulate delivery of quality milk to milk collection centers
    3. Identify and overcome barriers to milk consumption for vulnerable household members

    Research Approach

    To increase access to technologies among dairy farmers, an interactive ICT platform will be developed and tested. Digital information with basic animal husbandry technologies and an interactive platform to link with experts on specific technology needs will be provided to dairy farmers under treatment arms, whereas an equal number of dairy farms/farmers will serve as a control group. The performance of animals and economics in two groups will be compared.

    For increasing access to quality feed and for promoting forage-based dairy production to reduce the cost of production, different summer, winter, and perennial forage crop varieties (leguminous and non-leguminous) developed /recommended or in pipeline by NARC will be screened for suitability and higher nutrient production at project sites and promising/selected varieties will be promoted for adoption and scaling up.     

    To promote clean and hygienic milk production, farmers and milk handlers will be trained in Good Husbandry Practices (GHP) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). 

    Principal Investigator (PI) and lead institution

    Bhola Shankar Shrestha, Heifer Project International

     

    Co-PI and collaborator institutions

    • Ram P Ghimire, Nepal Agricultural Research Council
    • Laurie Miller, Tufts University
    • Albert De Vries, University of Florida

    Additional collaborators

    • Rajendra Prasad Yadav, National Dairy Development Board
    • Araniko Rajbhandari, Nepal Dairy Pvt. Ltd.
    • Krishna Bastola, Pawan Dairy Pvt. Ltd.
    • Hira Bahadur Khatri, Shiva Ganga Dairy Pvt. Ltd
    • Rudra Prasad Paudel, Dairy Development Corporation

    Resources

    Project Flyer

    Project Poster


    Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems is part of Feed the Future

    This work was funded in whole or part by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security under Agreement # AID-OAA-L-15-00003 as part of Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems. Additional funding was received from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation OPP#060115.  Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors alone.

     

     

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    Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems
    P.O. Box 110910, Gainesville, Florida 32611-0910
    (352) 294-1064

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