Milk seen as white gold

CHRIS GARDNER/Waikato Times

LARGE: Ranasinghe Premasiri tends to his herd in a shed built through a Fonterra scheme.

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By New Zealand standards Ranasinghe Premasiri's dairy farm, 15 cows on less than a hectare, is tiny but by Sri Lankan standards it's one of the civil war-torn island nation's largest dairy farms.

The average Sri Lankan dairy farm has two or three cows producing five or six litres of milk per day.

Ranasinghe, whose farm is within about 50km of Fonterra Brands Lanka's three dairy factories on the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo which he supplies, milks all of his Sahiwa/Jersey cross cows at 1am every morning by hand and collects the milk in a bucket.

At the peak of the season milking takes about three hours per day.

So fond is he of his animals that they all have names  Ratthi, Sinhalese for Daisy, is popular, with other cows named Small Ratthi, Big Ratthi and Blackie.

While he has hired help, he doesn't trust anyone else to collect the white gold which flows from his cows' udders. Mastitis is a common problem in the hot and humid Sri Lankan, climate and other health problems  often attended to by the Government's veterinary service  are milk fever and cataracts. Other health concerns include ticks and dogs.

Ranasinghe's milk is transferred to a churn which he takes, via a three-wheeler taxi, about six kilometres to one of nine collection points Fonterra has in Sri Lanka. The milk is transferred to Fonterra's three-factory depot, on the outskirts of Colombo, via Fonterra tankers known as bowsers in the local vernacular, where it undergoes 17 different tests before it is processed and enters the market.

Ranasinghe is one of 3500 Sri Lankan dairy farmers who supply Fonterra and it's easy to see, very quickly, why 94 per cent of the milk Fonterra turns into powdered products and yoghurt in Sri Lanka comes from New Zealand  including 40,000 tonnes of milkpowder from the Te Rapa and Te Awamutu sites in the Waikato.

Ranasinghe's milking season usually starts in March or April, which is when I visited his farm, with four cows fed on grass harvested from a neighbouring marshland in milk, producing about eight litres of milk per day.

Manure is recycled as fertiliser, since urea is so pricey  it costs about 1000 Sri Lankan rupees per tonne of fertilised grass.

At the peak of the season, in November or December, Ranasinghe's herd produces about 30 litres per day, earning him about 25,000 Sri Lankan rupees (around $370) per month  production rates that would make any New Zealand dairy farmer cry. The average New Zealand Holstein-Friesian produces about 20 litres per day, which is why Sri Lanka's livestock minister has asked for 15,000 cows to cross with the local breed.

Ranasinghe, too, counts himself lucky to have been helped with a 100,000 Sri Lankan rupee ($1200) boost from Fonterra which enabled him to build his milking shed. Ninety-five per cent of Sri Lankan dairy farmers have a long-term relationship with Fonterra which prevents them from jumping ship.

He is one of 3000 farmers to have benefited from a micro finance loan scheme which assists farmers with capital projects.

While Ranasinghe, who is in his 30s and grew up on the family farm, counts himself lucky to have such steady work, dairy farming in Sri Lanka is not seen as a career and he thinks it is doubtful either of his two-year-old twins, Imantha and Imanthi, will continue the family business.

His wife, Priyangan, says through an interpreter she would prefer they get an education.

"There's a perception that dairy farming is a job that people do when they can't do anything else," she says.
Expansion is little more than a pipedream with half a hectare of land selling for more than one million Sri Lankan rupees.

Ranasinghe also grows cash crops on his farm  rice, coconuts and rubber all fetch a good price in the Sri Lankan market.

The Sri Lankan dairy market was worth $286m to Fonterra in 2009 and was projected to grow to $376m next year, $394m in 2011 and $419m in 2012.

* Chris Gardner travelled to Sri Lanka courtesy of Fonterra.  

- © Fairfax NZ News