THE National Dairy Authority (NDA) is optimistic local dairy production will further improve with the completion of key projects on the industry.
The agency said in a statement yesterday it is set to complete five new stock farms by the end of 2024.
To be operational by early 2025, the stock farms will increase the existing herd of nearly 80,000 dairy animals supported by the NDA.
NDA administrator Marcus Antonius Andaya noted the need for significant investments in increasing the animals to achieve milk self-sufficiency.
“The NDA will be aggressively importing cattle for our stock farms for the herd to multiply under the care of NDA. The acclimatized offspring of these dairy cattle will be the ones to be distributed to our dairy farmers,” Andaya said.
The NDA is now focused on importation of dairy cattle, expansion of herd sizes, increase in milk yields and provisions for farmer trainings, Andaya added.
NDA expects the country’s milk consumption to rise from 1 million tons in 2018 to 1.8 million tons in 2029.
Earlier, the Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc. (PCAFI) urged the government to provide further support for the local dairy sector amid a 15 percent rise in local milk production for the first half of the year to 16,020 metric tons (MT) from last year’s 13,940 MT for the similar period.
Danilo Fausto, PCAFI president, recently said such is needed as the local Dairy Industry Development Act of 1979 has been passed for over 40 years but the country is still producing below 1 percent of its milk requirement.
Based on data from the NDA, local milk production accounts for approximately 21 percent of the total liquid milk supply, equivalent to about one glass out of every five glasses consumed.
The local milk production sector is supported by a dairy animal inventory of 151,059 heads which includes 34,754 dairy cattle, 80,805 dairy carabao and 35,500 dairy goats.
NDA data also show that majority of the country’s milk and dairy net supply was shipped from abroad, increasing by 12.7 percent for the first half of the year at 1.65 million MT compared to 1.46 million MT in the first half 2023.
