Bangkok, 28 May 2012 – World Milk Day will be celebrated on 1 June in Thailand and many other countries in the world. The dairy sector in Asia has expanded rapidly over the last three decades crossing the 260 million tonnes mark in 2010. Over this same period, annual per capita consumption of milk has grown from 20 kilograms (kg) to 70 kg.
Demand for dairy products in the region has more than tripled since 1980 and despite the spectacular growth in production, production has lagged behind demand in many countries. As a result, dependency on the importation of milk and dairy products has increased and, with the recent global increase in prices for dairy products, the cost of imports has surged.
“While around 80 percent of milk in Asia is produced by smallholder farmers, there are tens of millions of traders and dairy entrepreneurs, small and large. The smallholder dairy sector produces multiple benefits for its numerous stakeholders including income generation for small producers, off-farm job creation, low energy use compared with industrialized dairy production; and improved household food security and nutrition”, said FAO’s regional chief Hiroyuki Konuma today at a press conference at the Thai ministry of agriculture and cooperatives in Bangkok.
The first World Milk Day was celebrated in June 2001 and has since become an annual event celebrated in a large number of countries throughout the world as a way to focus attention on milk as a global nutritious food, with a special emphasis on the nutritional status of children and undernourished people.
FAO has been an active partner in Asia’s dairy sector development and implemented a range of technical assistance projects for direct or indirect support to dairy development in Asia, including providing support on animal nutrition, generic improvement of dairy animals, processing and marketing, and overall capacity development.
FAO has also invested in setting up training centres for smallholder dairy producers and processors in a number of countries and provided assistance in dairy policy formulation and implementation around the region.
This support has paid rich dividends and generated many successful models in the dairy sector.
In recent years, FAO has been actively promoting South-South cooperation to facilitate knowledge exchange and experience in pursuit of increasing productivity, quality and profitability of dairy sector in Asia.
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For more information contact Vinod Ahuja by mail on
Vinod.Ahuja@fao.org