Tooro dairy cooperative society has received an “Ultra High Temperature” machine worth UGX 1 billion under the Operation Wealth Creation-OWC program to improve the quality of its dairy products. The Machine comes at a time the cooperative is struggling to improve the quality and shelf life of its milk products.
Michael Kasaija, the secretary-manager of Tooro Dairy Cooperative Society in Fort portal city, says that they requested the machine from the government in 2019 to enable them to improve their products through value addition and in turn improve the household income of farmers in the region.
Kasaija says the dairy has been struggling to maintain the quality of milk, which would only last for three days forcing them to sell milk at lower prices to mitigate losses. He, however, says that with the 10,000-liter capacity UHT machine, the dairy will be able to preserve milk for between 3 to 6 months. He says that the region has been facing a challenge with milk production and sustainability during the dry season.
He explains that in the dry season they collect less than 1200 liters of milk daily while in the wet season they receive over 3500 liters yet they had limited capacity to preserve the excess milk. Kasaija encourages farmers to increase their milk production to sustain the milk supply to their clients since the dairy is also considering to increase the milk price from Shillings 1200 a liter to Shillings 1500.
The Operation Wealth Creation programme is a presidential initiative launched in July 2013 as an intervention to efficiently facilitate national socio-economic transformation, with a focus on raising household incomes and wealth creation by transforming subsistence farmers to commercial agriculture to support the national economy.
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