Milkiland: tracking milk collection from smallholder farms

Milkiland

Approximately 150 million households around the globe are engaged in milk production. In most developing countries, milk is produced by smallholders, and milk production contributes to household livelihoods, food security and nutrition. 

Facts

• In the last three decades, world milk production has increased by more than 50 percent, from 482 million tonnes in 1982 to 754 million tonnes in 2012.
• India is the world’s largest milk producer, with 16 percent of global production, followed by the United States of America, China, Pakistan and Brazil.
• Since the 1970s, most of the expansion in milk production has been in South Asia, which is the main driver of milk production growth in the developing world.
• Milk production in Africa is growing more slowly than in other developing regions, because of poverty and — in some countries — adverse climatic conditions.
• The countries with the highest milk surpluses are New Zealand, the United States of America, Germany, France, Australia and Ireland.
• The countries with the highest milk deficits are China, Italy, the Russian Federation, Mexico, Algeria and Indonesia.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Project

As you can see milk production in the world is increasing and the problem Milkiland struggled with is common to milk producers all around the world. Considerable part of milk is produced by small or private farm and logistics is based on gathering relatively small amounts of milk from multiple farmers and then carry it corresponding company's process to a storage or facility to further processing. As most of such companies are relatively small they use straightforward paper-based process. All the participants, company people and farmers, write and operate paper documents: log journal, checks etc. Such paper-based process is easy to setup but in fact not easy to maintain. Here we see two factors: a). human beings inevitably make mistakes consciously or unconsciously b). accounting even in the smallest companies are computer-based and uploading data to it is just typing what they have on their papers. The only rational solution is to provide paper-free technology, affordable and easy to use, to substitute papers. This project is a ready-to-use solution that easily adapts to any process including integration with your existing IT infrastructure.