Dairy farm is one area that is able to generate economic activities. But from economic approach, the business seems less profitable because of low livestock ownership. This was said by Prof. Dr. Ir. Sudi Nurtini, S.U when inaugurated as professor of Faculty of Animal Sciences, UGM on Thursday (26/5) at UGM Senate Hall. According to Nurtini, dairy cattle farming are profitable and sustainable if the minimum ownership is 5.23 livestock units or 6 cows and the proportion of lactating cows is 70%. Meanwhile, economic scale can be achieved with 10-12 ownership of cows for each farmer.
In her speech entitled 'Economic Incentives for People’s Dairy Farm ', Nurtini said that farmers need incentives to develop more efficient dairy farm business. With this matter, it is expected to strengthen domestic dairy industries someday. "People’s dairy farmers are still experiencing disincentives and if this is allowed to happen, it will be an obstacle to achieve the success of national dairy industry," she said.
Effort that can be done to improve economic incentives of dairy farmers is through market expansion. In the practice of marketing fresh milk, milk processing industry (IPS) is still considered as major market that should only be an alternative market from other market opportunities which are more closely related to the interests of farmers. "Indonesian people who prefer milk powder and sweetened condensed milk instead of fresh milk/liquid milk is a challenge and an opportunity for producers of SSDN. This market opportunity breakthrough should be utilized well in order to make SSDN market more competitive," the woman born in Yogyakarta, 25 December 1953 said.
Milk consumption of Indonesian society is different from that in some developed countries in the world. Indonesia is a very small consumer of liquid milk. Data of Directorate General of Agriculture and Chemical Industries in 2007 mentioned that Indonesia’s liquid milk consumption is only 18%, while European countries nearly 100%, USA 99.7%, India 98%, Thailand 88%, and China 76.5%. Meanwhile, according to FAO data (2011), Indonesia’s milk consumption in 2007 was 7.3 liters/person/ year, lower than other Asean countries like Malaysia 25 liters/person/year, Thailand 22.1 liters /person/year, and Philippines 18 liters /person/year.
Fresh milk market expansion effort can be done through milk program for school children. However, the effort should be synergized with efforts to improve milk quality by changing the behavior of farmers and officers who deal with post-harvesting. Furthermore Nurtini said, Thailand is one of countries in the ASEAN region which is relatively better in the handling of dairy industry.
Thailand’s milk production is from small-scale dairy farmers who have 5-10 cows and about 28% of farmers own more than 20 dairy cows. The population of dairy cows in Thailand in the year 2009 reached 498,000 with 293,000 lactating cows and milk production of 840,000 tons, slightly higher than the population of dairy cows in Indonesia, whereas population and land area of Thailand are much smaller than Indonesia. "Therefore, it is not wrong for us to learn from Thailand in dairy development," she explained.
Another effort to improve economic incentive is to increase livestock ownership gradually. This program can be implemented through a partnership with core companies/ associated with CSR programs based on profit sharing.