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

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