June first every year is World Milk Day. This year’s celebration is notable because only 200 litres were collected on June 1, 2021, at the start of milk collection on Nestlé Nigeria’s Nigeria Livestock Development Project (NLDP) – a partnership with FCT Agriculture & Rural Development Secretariat (ARDS), 2SCALE and CBi Innovations Ltd.; now, the project is delivering 1,500 L/day at Paikon Kore Grazing Reserve and the more recent partnership with the Kaduna State Government, 2SCALE and CBi Innovations Ltd is producing 1,000L/day at Kachia Grazing Reserve.

Nestlé intends to continue to support dairy development in Nigeria to achieve its objective of shared value with Nigerian stakeholders through backward integration. This initiative by Nestlé will also eventually save Nigeria precious foreign exchange when the company reaches secure fresh milk supplies to substitute its milk powder imports.

Many may not know that a healthy cow needs to drink 40-60L of water a day (roughly 2% of its body weight) for survival, and then for every litre of milk produced, it will require an additional 3L of water. The endless search for water makes those in charge of livestock roam around our cities and countryside and not just the hunt for good pasture. Nestlé Nigeria has sunk solar-powered industrial boreholes in the Paikon Kore Grazing Reserve and provided drinking troughs for the animals to ensure that the milking cows get sufficient water for their sustenance and boost production. Communities that prioritise milk supply to the company also get prioritised for water supply by Nestlé. One of the pillars of Nestlé’s NLDP project is the provision of Better Fodder which includes sufficient clean water, balanced pasture, silage, and haymaking.

Local cattle breeds in Nigeria, when healthy, typically produce an average of 2L of Milk per day depending on the quality of feeding (fodder and concentrates). They eat about 15% of their body weight in dry matter (fodder without the water) or between 12kg and 20kg of hay per cow. NLDP has cultivated 51Ha of pasture (Napier Grass and Bracheria) in Paikon Kore and 201 of 1,000Ha in the Kachia Grazing Reserve in Kaduna State. To boost production, Nestle Nigeria is providing Cotton Seed Cakes (which increases milk production by up to 2L) in exchange for milk or cash and has supplied over 6,000 salt licks (vitamin blocks) for 6,000 cattle.

Nestle Nigeria Achieves Significant Milk Collection Milestone on World Milk Day n Initiative, 2008). A second pillar of Nestlé’s NLDP project is achievement of a Better Product. This includes ensuring healthy cows, clean milking, and hygienic milk collection. Only healthy cows can give good quality milk. Nestlé has helped to deworm and vaccinate over 6,000 cattle so far in Paikon Kore against Foot and Mouth Disease and treat against Contagious Bovine PleuroPneumonia (CBPP) in collaboration with the FCT/ARDS. Those diseases affect milk production as well. Milk is a significant resource amongst Fulani Milk Producers. Although the cattle may belong to the man, the milk belongs to the woman and revenue from milk sales is what she uses to take care of the family. Nestlé pays a premium of N20 above-market rates to ensure it incentivizes the supply of good quality milk. Milk is also a very significant part of the diet of Fulani Milk Producers. Typical households have herds that contain no more than 5-10 milking cows and thus could harvest 20L as a household. Typically, families do not sell more than 50% of what they get and retain the rest for home use.

2,500L/day would therefore involve anything from about 250 to 1,000 households. Twenty-five households would be represented in one cooperative, so it takes at least 10-40 functioning cooperatives to reach this volume of milk. In Paikon Kore, Nestlé has helped establish 28, of which 15 are active in supplying milk to the NLDP. In Kachia Grazing Reserve, there are 85 already established cooperatives, 30 of which are active and 10 of them currently providing the NLDP with milk. The feat of 2,500L/day involves some 25 cooperatives housing some 625 households milking between 4,000 and 6,000 cows every day. Milk quality is not automatic. This is primarily why for many years, fresh milk from Fulani Milk Producers or any other local Milk Producing Groups did not make it through to the industries that require fresh milk. Kunu, Kindermo, Ghee, Nunu etc., are the local products made from boiling milk and the resulting products only last a few hours. Industrial processors require raw milk, not boiled milk, and the handling is crucial to whether this could be used in their processes. The NLDP has taught participants modern Milk Handling and Milking Hygiene techniques and has trained over 1,400 producers.

The milk comes from a cow with a low bacterial count. Once outside the animal, depending on temperature, bacterial activity starts to increase; however, lowering the milk temperature to around 2 degrees Celcius keeps the bacteria from multiplying. The project has employed fifteen aggregators in Paikon Kore and eight aggregators in Kachia Grazing Reserve. Each aggregator is trained to ensure that when collecting milk, they test for spoilage and adulteration, for which they are each equipped with a motorbike, milk churns and lactometers. Their job is to rush the milk to the Milk Collection and Cooling Centers (MCCC) refurbished by Nestlé, in Paikon Kore and Kachia, where the milk is bulked in cooling tanks chilled to the requisite temperature after further tests. This low temperature is then maintained till the milk is delivered to the processor. Maintaining this cold chain is crucial to maintaining quality where other factors such as adulteration have been sorted. Our aggregators are paid a healthy commission per litre of accepted milk, so they have an incentive not to bring milk that can be rejected at the MCCC. Nestlé equips the MCCC with modern laboratory equipment to ensure food safety is performed to Nestlé standards, and the staff are trained with the right gear to conform to safety standards. Nestlé has also provided that 30KVA solar power system is used to reduce the fossil fuels used at the MCCCs.

In Kachia Grazing Reserve, Nestlé is building a new MCCC from scratch. The installed cooling tank capacity at Kachia is currently 1,000L, and in Paikon Kore, 2,000L. Nestle has paid for and is expecting delivery of more cooling tanks to take the volume in Kachia to 3,000L and Paikon Kore to 3,500L, making a total of 6,500L in anticipation of further growth in milk volumes before the end of 2022. Achieving this new volume will not be easy as more milk is available, yes, but from locations more than 2hrs rides by motorbike away from the MCCCs, which is too far to maintain the quality of the milk. Nestlé has invested in solar-powered portable cooling units, which will be placed within the producer communities and can cool the milk down rapidly, straight after the cow is milked. The milk can be safely aggregated and cooled in far-away locations before transportation to the MCCCs. For this purpose, Nestlé has also invested in cooling vans that will pick up from distant places and, in some cases, deliver to far away customers.

In the MCCC locations, Nestlé contributes to the local economy by ensuring the employment and training of locals and the purchase of services from the community. Nestlé aims to demonstrate good citizenship with the communities in which it is working. This started with deep engagements through CBi Innovations Ltd with the FCT Administration and the Kaduna State Government and then the various Chiefs, Hakimi's and so on and the Sarkis and Ardos of the local settlements.

World Milk Day 2022, Nestlé, in partnership with the FCT Administration, will explore the synergies between crop farmers and livestock farmers to see the levels of symbiotic associations for mutual economic advancement. Many areas of Nigeria experience tensions between these two groups, and Nestlé hopes to continue to be a purveyor of shared value wherever it works. To this end, Nestlé is planning to establish a demonstration farm (Jersey Cows are currently being procured) to show the livestock farmers how to improve their milk yields through breed improvement; it will house a veterinary clinic and fodder storage and silage production. It will also show how crop residue can be purchased and incorporated into the feed for cattle and other cross economic opportunities between the crop and livestock farmers. As a result, perhaps a model for mutual dependence can evolve, reducing farmer-herder clashes across Nigeria.