a journey by

Sachita Jasani
caid : 15842686
CONTENTS
i ] Background .......................................................................................................... 5

ii ] Objective ............................................................................................................... 5

iii ] The perennial sufferers: Small Dairy Farmers ...................................... 6

iv ] The Problem: Skewed Dairy Value Chain ................................................ 8

v ] The Solution: Efficient Dairy Value Chain with skilled farmers ......... 9

vi ] My efforts to help address the needs of Milky Way .............................. 10

vii ] Impact ................................................................................................................ 11

ix ] Things I Learnt ............................................................................................... 12

x ] Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 12

xi ] Appendix A - Interviews with farmers ..................................................... 14

i] BACKGROUND
My extreme passion for rural development stemmed from an interaction with my helper at home,
who lives in a small village in Satara along with her family. She was disheartened at the fact that
her uncle had committed suicide because of the lack of success despite the large effort put in by
him as a farmer. More than making me realize how privileged I am, this incident brought to my
attention the harsh conditions that the people in my country are forced to deal with. I thought
that it was imperative to make a change and ameliorate the lives of these farmers. I strongly feel
that with the correct approach, it will be possible to change the lives of these dairy farmers.

ii] OBJECTIVES
Through my time and effort with Milky Way, my main objectives were to:

• Understand the inefficiencies and leakages in the value chain.

• Learn how a skewed value chain affects the two most primary stakeholders of the value chain
- producers and consumers.

• Know in what direction efforts need to be put to plug the gaps in the dairy value chain.
• Understand what it to takes to create a sustainable organization to address the issues of small/
marginal dairy farmers

• Help Milky Way address some of the issues in the dairy value chain.
• To understand the challenges of building a Social Enterprise
My involvement with Milky Way began in June 2015 where I contacted Prabu Guthi, the CEO of
Milky Way. I worked closely with him to try and understand exactly what I could do to make the
farmers’ lives better and to make sure I did everything in my capacity to ensure that they lead
better lives. I started visiting the villages regularly to understand the ground realities. I visited
farmers from different villages. A few of the interactions that I had with the farmers are attached
in Appendix A.

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 The middlemen were not taking care of the milk they collected. They did not take appropriate
iii] THE PERENNIAL SUFFERERS: measures to preserve the milk that they collected from the farmers. This was extremely unethical

SMALL DAIRY FARMERS on the part of the middlemen because they supplied the customers with milk of substandard
quality that they paid higher prices for.

Meeting and interacting with the dairy farmers from different areas brought to my attention the
great extent of the issue and also made me realize how grateful I should be to have been brought FIG. 1: A dairy farmer at work in Milky Way’s catchment area
up by a privileged family.

TABLE 1: Milky Way Beneficiary profile. The following table sheds light on the life of a typical
dairy farmer.

Land Holding < 2 Acres

No of Cattle 1-2

Yield/Cattle/day Low (2-3 litres)

Access to Capital None

Skills required to run a dairy Limited

Dairy farming knowledge Limited

Dependency on Middlemen High

Availability of fodder Only during rainy season

The table below sheds light on the problems faced by the farmers (especially in Milky Way’s
Accessibility to markets Nil catchment area) because of lack of knowledge, skills and capital.

Interacting with the farmers across villages made me realize that they were dependent on TABLE 2: Why dairy farming is not a viable livelihood option for most small farmers
middlemen to collect milk from them. Middlemen collected milk from farmers at very low prices
and used to sell it in the nearby markets.
No market linkages/
No skills No knowledge No access to capital Dependence on
The middlemen were not concerned about the farmers and their wellbeing. Although they knew Why dairy middlemen
farming is not
that the farmers had limited knowledge and skill to successfully run their dairies, they did not
viable for small
help them gain knowledge about how their work should be done. They exploited the farmers dairy farmers
Results in low yield and productivity Leads to low
Do not get fair price
completely, which resulted in decline in their incomes. and results in cost of milk yielding cattle in
for the milk supplied
production being very high their farms

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 iv] THE PROBLEM: v] THE SOLUTION: EFFICIENT DAIRY
SKEWED DAIRY VALUE CHAIN VALUE CHAIN WITH SKILLED FARMERS
Interacting with farmers and working with Milky Way helped me understand problems of a Spending time with the farmers and working with Milky Way helped me understand how Milky
skewed value chain. The following figure details the problem. Way is trying to address the issues of small farmers. Milky Way works to plug gaps in the value
chain. Milky Way works with dairy farmers to help them increase the yield and productivity of

FIG 2: The skewed dairy supply chain the cattle which in turn reduces the cost of milk production. It does the following with farmers:

• Helps farmers gain skill and knowledge required through training programs to turn
dairy farming into a viable livelihood option.
• Help farmers gain access to capital through banks and microfinance institutes.
• Train the farmers to produce fodder which could last the entire year
• Train farmers about cattle nutrition and help farmers tend better to the needs of cattle
• Take farmers on field visits to learn from other successful dairy farmers
The following figure helps us understand how Milky Way is trying to address the issues in the
dairy value chain.

FIG 3: The efficient dairy supply chain with skilled and knowledgeable dairy farmers

As we can see from the picture above, the farmers lacked knowledge, skills and the capital to
make dairy farming a profitable venture. They suffered severe losses.

Small farmers usually have one or two cattle in their farms. Usually the yield per cattle is around
3-4 litres per day. Most of the small farmers are dependent on middlemen to collect their milk. The
middlemen end up paying only Rs.9-12 per litre of milk. Most of the farmers do not get paid on time.

Farmers’ lack of skills and knowledge is another big factor that plagues farmers of the area.
Farmers do not know how to tend to their animals. This results in cattle being weak and unable
to conceive. Since cattle do not deliver calves on a timely basis, their milk production remains
very low. As a result, farmers suffer huge losses

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 As we can see from the above diagram, Milky Way helps farmers produce better quality milk in I helped them purchase a 350 litre boiler and a 500 litre fridge with the money that I had raised
their farms. Also, Milky Way procures milk directly from the farmers. As a result, there is no
adulteration. Milky Way also sets up infrastructure to maintain the quality of the collected milk
FIG 4: A 350 litre tank
before delivering it to the consumers. As a results of Milky Way’s efforts, consumers get fresh and
unadulterated milk at highly competitive prices.

vi] MY EFFORTS TO HELP ADDRESS

THE NEEDS OF MILKY WAY
My main goal working with Milky Way was to ensure that the farmers can taste the fruits of their
hard work. I helped make this possible by raising large amounts of money to improve the facilities
and purchase equipment that would improve the quality of their products. I helped Milky Way
connect with several well-known hotels and restaurants in Pune, Mumbai and Mahabaleshwar so
that they could buy their paneer and other milk products if required.

MY EFFORTS IN HELPING MILKY WAY BUY EQUIPMENT:

On my second visit to Milky Way, I spent time understanding the needs of the farmers. Discussion MY EFFORTS IN HELPING MILKY WAY SELL THEIR DAIRY PRODUCTS IN
with Prabu revealed that they were in need of better quality equipment. The lack of the following PUNE AND MUMBAI
equipment prevented Milky Way from reaching out to more farmers and it was important for Milky
Way to have the following equipment to offer a better price to the farmers they were helping. Further discussions with Prabu Guthi revealed that the farmers were in need of introductions to
hotels and restaurants in Pune to sell their paneer. I helped them gain access to the owners of the
• Boiler - A steel VAT used to boil milk before curdling it in to paneer (cottage cheese). following restaurants in Pune – Little Italy, Shahaji Caterers, Sun and Sand and Westin. We met
O Milky Way was using open, big cylindrical vessels to boil milk. This sometimes resulted the owners of the following restaurants in Mumbai - Sun and Sand, Shalimar and Jewel of India.
in milk getting charred and was a very inefficient way of boiling milk as lots of heat used I am currently helping them gain access to the famous Farmers’ Market of Pune at Westin Pune.
to get lost
• Deep Freezer - Milky Way needed a refrigerator to store paneer in chilled water to solidify it.
O Milky Way had no fridge and this resulted in wastage of large amounts of paneer.
vii] IMPACT
After spending time at school and on weekends, I started talking to my friends and relatives
In the past year, Milky Way has been able to impact around 350 small farmers. It produces
about Milky Way and their needs. I thought I could collect some money to help Milky Way get
around 100 kilos of cottage cheese a day.
the equipment that they required. With a lot of effort, I managed to raise a total of Rs.1,75,000.

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 like to thank my parents, for whom I am forever grateful for inspiring me to work hard and
guiding me throughout this project. My work would never have been possible without their
constant support.

FIG 5: Prabu Guthi, Founder CEO of Milky Way

viii] THINGS I LEARNT

Working with Milky Way has helped me gain awareness of the multitude of problems that the
farmers in my country are exposed to. I have been made aware of the extent of poverty and the
harsh conditions that farmers are forced to deal with. It has also made me realize how grateful I
should be for being raised in a privileged family. Moreover, being exposed to and having a first
hand account of the difficulties of the farmers really opened my eyes and encouraged me to work
for the betterment of society. I can positively say that working with this organization has helped
me develop into a caring, selfless and warm-hearted person.

ix] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Prabu Guthi, the CEO of Milky Way for guiding and mentoring me
throughout my journey with Milky Way. He has also inspired me to be a selfless and caring
person through the large amount of work he has done and the extent to which he has contributed
to the well being of society. Secondly, I would like to thank each and every farmer for their
time and their willingness to share their problems with me. Thirdly, I would like to thank my
school teacher, Ms. Sujata Sengupta for being supportive of this project. And lastly, I would

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 x] APPENDIX A: INTERVIEWS WITH FIG 6: Sachita with Manoj, the farmer from Chorambe

FARMERS OF MILK WAY

interview 1
NAME OF THE FARMER: Manoj Sapkal
VILLAGE: Chorambe
Sachita: What’s the name of your village?
Manoj: Chorambe

Sachita: How many Cattle do you own?

Manoj: 7

Sachita: How many litres of milk do you supply per day?

Manoj: 30 litres per day
Sachita: What has been the change in your income in the past year?
Sachita: How many cattle did you own before Milky Way began its work last year? Manoj: Earlier I used to make around Rs.2000 a month. Now I easily make more than Rs.15000
Manoj: 1 cow a month.

Sachita: How many litres were you supplying a year back?
Manoj: 3 litres
Sachita: Who was collecting the milk back then?
Manoj: Middleman from nearby villages
Sachita: Are you thinking of owning more cows?
Manoj: My goal is to have 20 cattle in my shed by the end of this year.
Sachita: You would make lots of money.
Manoj: (Laughs) who would not want to?
Sachita: What are the other benefits of associating with Milky Way?
Manoj: Earlier we used to supply milk to middlemen for very little money with no access to feed,
medicines and other essentials needed for the cattle. Now we get medicines, expert advice, feed
and lots of knowledge at our doorstep.
Sachita: What was the money you were being paid by the middlemen back then?
Manoj: Rs.12 at the most
Sachita: What do you get paid per litre of milk now?
Manoj: At least Rs.20-22 per litre

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 Sachita: What are your current challenges? FIG 7: Ashok’s farm in Nizare
Manoj: I want to have more cows. But I’m finding it difficult get access to capital. Bank loans are
difficult to come by. Target is to own 20 cows in a year’s time.

Sachita: Closing comments?

Manoj: It’s been a great year so far. It would only get better if I get 20 cows in my shed.

interview 2
NAME OF THE FARMER: Ashok
VILLAGE: Nizare
Sachita: Hi Ashok!
Ashok: Hi

Sachita: What’s the name of your village?

Ashok: Nizare

Sachita: How many Cattle do you own?

Ashok: 3

Sachita: How many litres of milk do you supply per day?

Ashok: 20-22 litres per day

Sachita: How many cattle did you own before Milky Way began its work last year?
Ashok: I had none. Milky Way encouraged me to start the dairy farm and gave me all the
knowledge and support

Sachita: Have you made any profits?

Ashok: I have gotten back the money I had invested on the cows. Now I have started to make profits.

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 Sachita: Have you set any goals for yourself ?
Ashok: I want to own around 12 cows in the next year or so and have total of 25 cows in the next
two years

Sachita: How much do you make a month?

Ashok: I make around Rs.12000 a month and save around Rs.7000 after spending around Rs.5000
on the cow

Sachita: What are your challenges in scaling up your business?

Ashok: It’s difficult to get finances in place. We rarely get access to bank loans.

Sachita: I heard you reverse migrated

Ashok: Yes! I had a sports gear outlet in Bombay. I moved back as it was getting difficult in
Bombay.

Sachita: Would you encourage more people to return to the village?

Ashok: Of Course! Our village could only give Milky Way half a litre of milk on its first day of
operation. Now we supply around 90 litres every day to villages.

Sachita: You want to add anything more?

Ashok: I just want to work hard and live a good life!

Sachita: Thank you!

Ashok: Thank you!

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