Impact of and Support to Dairy Sector Development Sinthe Livestock Cooperative is located in Sinthe village  a village in the area of Sagaing township  just Southwest of Mandalay in the Central Dry Zone of Myanmar. The Dry Zone covers more than 54 000km  encompassing 58 townships which span from lower Sagaing region  to the western and central parts of Mandalay region and most of Magway region. It is estimated that approximately one-quarter of the country’s population live in the Central Dry Zone area. Situated in the shadow of the Rakhine mountain range  the Dry Zone receives limited rains compared to country averages. Insufficient rain is not the only potential hazard  however  as decreasing forest cover and soil erosion place communities at greater risk of localized flash floods during times of heavy rain. The Dry Zone is particularly affected by food security issues (The MIMU  2017). In Sagaing region from January till about June (about six months) production can take place. From July till September it is rainy season and cows are moved due to the flooding. Milk production decreases. From October till December production is mediocre as cows are calving.

Sinthe livestock cooperative is based near Mandalay  an area where many cows can be found. The village Sinthe has two cooperatives: one general cooperative focused on agricultural activities mainly for the rice production and the other one is the livestock cooperative which is assessed. The cooperative only activity is providing loans of funding made available through cooperative department  as well as their own equity and savings. About 352 farmers borrow every half year amounts between 100 000 and 500 000 MMK. Not all of the members currently have cows  including the board members. As the milk price is low  the board members want to find ways to increase the livelihood of the villagers. Milk processing might be an option and is supported by the Sagaing cooperative department. Till date  no activities have been carried out to setup this processing activity. Although the board members have (probably) the best intentions  they don’t know the steps to be made. The BHAG of the cooperation: “Highest income for farmers in Sinthe village through processing milk”. The cooperative has the ambition to start collecting milk and do the processing. When the plan can be made concrete  this processing plant could be regarded as a smoking chimney. The board members have an ambitious business plan for the cooperative. They already discussed with near 50 members who have more than 10 number of cows. Their plan to be a group business is dairy processing. The cooperative will collect milk from members  advice on cows with the collaboration of other technical departments  and the member will invest money in a dairy processing unit.Next to that  the investment of dairy processing will be from members’ investment and investors from outside. The investors will provide money to buy machinery dairy processing  and receive a part of profit pro-ratio from dairy processing output. Dairy processing will buy milk from cooperative  process milk into dairy products  and sell to the market.Members are willing to invest in the dairy cooperative with 200 000/- MMK. The members who have cows will be organized to be members of the cooperative. The members who have no cows will be stimulated to buy the cows based on the return of the dairy processing unit.As still  quite some information about the business case is unknown  the coming half year will be used to gather information and to see whether processing of dairy is feasible. With a feasibility study  this should be proven. As the farmers are not behaving like members of a cooperative it is suggested to carry out a My.Coop training to make the (potential) members aware of the rights and obligations of being a member of a cooperative.2020 PlanThis is the third year of Agriterra involvement with this client. In the 1st year (2018)  the cooperative established the dairy business by breeding more cows. In 2nd year (2019)  the cooperative has started milk processing into dairy products  such as Yoghurt  Pasteurized Milk  Fresh Milk and Cold Milk. In 3rd year – 2020  the cooperative has many plans  such as to increase dairy processing  breed more milking cows  establish a new dairy product shop and install a set of a new dairy processing machine. They also planned to get finance from others to breed more cows for members. If members breed more milking cows  they will be supported by the Myanmar New Zealand Dairy Excellence Project to get quality milk.