Arla Foods has announced it has increased its commitment to support local dairy development in Nigeria with the inauguration of a new state-of-the-art farm.
The Danish-Swedish multinational cooperative added that the farm opening underpins its long-term commitment in Nigeria.
Training sessions for local farmers and industry-wide knowledge sharing aims to accelerate dairy development in the country, projected soon to be one of the most populated in the world.
The farm is the third pillar of Arla’s commitment to the development of the dairy sector in Nigeria.
The first step was The Milky Way Partnership, a public-private partnership, which Arla established in 2016.
Together with NGO Care Denmark, The Danish Agricultural and Food Council, Seges Innovation, Nigerian pastoralist organisation Coret and NGO Milk Value Chain Foundation, it aims to improve livelihoods and efficiency for local smallholder farmers by capacity building and providing access to basic primary materials.
More than 4,200 local farmers took part in the training sessions and they have seen a 200% increase in their income.
Sustainable Local Dairy Sector
Arla further expanded on its commitment to develop a sustainable local dairy sector in Nigeria in 2019 by entering into a partnership with the Kaduna State government to establish the Damau Household Milk Farm.
The 8,200-hectare ranch project aims to settle 1,000 nomadic dairy farmer households, improve their farming practices and provide a route-to-market for their milk, which goes into production of local dairy products.
The milk sourced from the local smallholder farm clusters, from the Damau farm and from the Arla farm, will be pooled and used for production of local dairy products at one of the two sites Arla is operating in Nigeria.
Affordable Nutrition
“With some expecting it to become the second-most populous country in the world, and Lagos the most populous city in the world, by 2100, all eyes are on Nigeria at the moment," said executive vice president and head of Arla’s International business, Simon Stevens.
"While there of course is a business opportunity for us, our activities in Nigeria are very much focused on sharing our agricultural and production expertise in collaboration with local partners to secure access to affordable nutrition for the growing population. And the farm very clearly solidifies of our continued commitment to this."
© 2023 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest A-Brands news. Article by Robert McHugh. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
