REBUILDING OUR LOCAL DAIRY INDUSTRY

REBUILDING OUR LOCAL DAIRY INDUSTRY

My dear countrymen, sad to say, we are importing more than 90% of our total milk requirements. That is not a good thing to say for an agricultural country like ours. Much as I do not want to place blame on anyone, the fact remains that this dire reality could be blamed on some previous administrations, starting from the time when milk production started declining.

I remember that when I was a Brand Coordinator for Magnolia Dairy Products, I used to visit the Magnolia Dairy Farm in Tagaytay, Cavite as part of our product knowledge program. I do not know what happened since then, but the farm has been closed since then, even if San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is still making ice cream up to now. Presumably, SMC is already importing its dairy milk requirements, just like all the other ice cream makers.

Although it may sound like a worn-out cliché, I still want to say that by consuming food products imported from foreign sources, we are making the farmers of those countries rich, instead of making our own farmers rich. We are importing 30.9 % of our milk from the United States, 28.9% from New Zealand, and 9.2 % from Australia. And believe it or not, Malaysia is fourth in the list, because we are importing 5.3% from that ASEAN neighbor. All the rest are exporting less than 5.0% to us, namely the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Canada and Poland.

If only we are exporting enough to these ten countries, then we could perhaps there could be a positive balance of trade, and therefore our milk imports would be unjustifiable. Otherwise, we would be at the losing end not only because of our spending too much of our dollar reserves, we will also be incurring too much carbon debits because of the long-distance logistics. I wonder if there is a government agency that is tracking these econometrics? Could it be the DTI? Or the DOE? Or the PSA? Or the NEDA? Or the DOF perhaps? Why not an interagency task force?

Congratulations to Dehusk, a Filipino company that has recently launched what I believe is a Coconut Milk Beverage (CMB), as opposed to an Evaporated Filled Milk (EFM). I discussed the difference between the two in my essay dated September 23, 2024. Although Dehusk claims that they have already fortified their product to make it practically as nutritious as cow’s milk, I am still doing my research to determine whether their claim is 100% percent accurate. Meanwhile, I am willing to say that their product is good enough as a milk substitute for adult consumers, but not for newborns and infants.

What does it take to revive our dairy industry? I think that it does not really matter whether we get our milk from cows, carabaos, if we could produce what we need. I am however partial to goat milk, because goats would be easier to evacuate in case of floods, and goat meat has a huge global market, especially if certified as halal meat. I believe that whatever money that the government will put into dairy production, it will be very much worth it, not only because of livelihood creation, poverty reduction but also because of food security. Very truly yours, IKE SENERES/11-23-24/visit my blog senseneres.blogspot.com