Happy cows and plenty of milk are eternal goals of dairy producers world wide. Sophisticated genetics, state-of-the-art management programs and the work of many generations of dairy people have contributed a lot in this direction. As a result, 70+ pounds per day per cow in average is reality for many, many progressive dairies – not fantastic, just really good job.
Not in Ukraine.
The “in transition” label of our society means much more then just euphoria of former USSR collapse. It also means freedom, a lot of new possibilities and, at the same time, incredible challenge and plenty of new headaches.
The primary challenge is changing people minds and learning new ways to do most of the traditional everyday activities. All relations in the society have to be rebuilt.
Next, and the most painful thing is remodeling communist era infrastructure due to the market economy demands. “Remodeling” means changing the structure due to the plan. And obviously, the first part of this plan is deterioration of the old thing.
In case with Ukrainian dairy industry, this part of the plan is done very successfully. Collective dairy farming is really deteriorated. Triple decrease of cow’s quantity and double average milk productivity drop are sure evidences of this.
And it is always much more difficult to create then to destroy. To start building, first of all we have to identify our priorities and develop a strategy.
First things first.
Transition related problems are heavy burden, but this is not an excuse to ignore global present day challenges. Punishment for this will be failure in tomorrows success.
The sacred purpose of dairy industry is to provide society with essential milk products. But the main present day judge is market. And all its indexes show that dairy people throughout the world experience a really hard time now due to overproduction.
We are drowning in milk!
Fig.1.
Ukrainian collective farmers use horse driven carts for forage transportation. They cannot afford to use tractors and feeders as they used to during Communists time.
Huge modern dairies make milk cheaper. Traditional facilities are not able to compete. For them this is the way to go out of business. This is a personal tragedy for a small farmer. He is not just quitting the job. This is the end of his traditional lifestyle.
In the USA, where just 0.8% of productive population is involved in farming, going out of business for even half of them is not such a big deal for society in general.
But what about Ukraine with 23% of population farming? There is no simple answer for such a question.
One thing is obvious: this issue is not just solely a problem of dairy people – it becomes a big social problem. It is not possible to change lifestyle of so many people in a short period of time. Finding new solutions of rural development is vital for Ukraine.
Fig.2.
Traditional farming is the only way to make living for 23% of Ukrainian population.
There are just few possible directions to work in.
Protection of traditional farming lifestyle.
Ukrainian dairy people at present time have no really effective organization to represent their interests on the state level. Creation of such a structure and broad involvement of milk producers in its activities could benefit a lot.
Re-evaluation of farming development priorities in the light of growing ecological concern.
Deterioration of the collective farming system caused significant decrease in agricultural pressure on the environment. Fewer chemicals have been used during last 10 years, a lot of old technologies were lost. Main reason for it was economical difficulties, but we got a free benefit! Today we have a choice to go the same way of intensive farming or to develop a better, more environment friendly agriculture.
“More milk” is good old motto, but it is not perfect for new millennium.
“Good milk, clean environment and happy farmers” sounds better.
Improving social attitude toward dairy industry.
This issue is really painful and actual not only in Ukraine, but world wide as well.
We are good farmers, good milkers, and nice people but we still have to learn a lot about selling the fruits of our hard work: milk and milk products.
Just imagine, how much more milk people around the globe will consume, if we will employ guys, who make ads for “Coca-cola”? Sweetened colored flavored carbonated water has much better market position then Milk!
Our consumers are spoiled by incredibly expensive and impressive advertisement influence. And this is reality. We are not able to change rules. But we lose a lot by ignoring them. People tend to forget things. We have to remind them constantly about benefits of milk as an essential product.
Milk and milk production need sound market positioning and support of public opinion.
Biosecurity.
This issue is one of the newest dairy people headaches. Great concern about BSE and related problems hurts both milk production economics and our peace of mind. Still we do not have answers for a lot of questions. Ukraine is officially BSE free, but we do not feel safe because of this statement.
These are just few of present day challenges. They are interrelated and no one could be managed separately from the complex.
World is already too small and becomes smaller and smaller every year. The same is true about dairy world.
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