lack of consumption of dairy products, but overall impact for local dairy production was not huge.
Over the last few years, Arla Foods and the Chinese dairy company Mengniu have been working closely together to improve local dairy production. What improvements have been made so far? We began our cooperation back in 2012 when these two com- panies founded China Denmark Milk Technology Cooperation Center (CDMTCC) with the main goal of improving dairy farming in China. Back then the dairy farming situation in China was quite different from what it is now. The farms were small, milk quality was not always the best, improvements could be made on the animal welfare front and general knowledge about dairy farming was lacking. That is why the project steered towards tackling these aspects with training sessions, seminar activities, conferences and workshops, study tours to Europe, hundreds of advisory visits to farms and the publication of a huge number of edu cational resources for local farmers in China. All this has led to a totally different situation today and even though CDMTCC cannot take all the credit for the development, the work has had a very positive impact and helped local farmers to improve their dairy farm operation, particularly its productivity.
China has really excelled in milk production since the 1990s; can you summarise how you see the dairy sector in the next five to ten years? It would not surprise me at all to see the trend continue with more large-scale farms, that is, farms with at least 3,000 cows and one rotary milking system. We have seen that these farms seem to be very good on the productivity side, and this is also something we feel that different local authorities in China see as part of their future planning within agriculture. Clusters with
maybe 20 big farms are already under construction in several places today in China with 60,000–80,000 cows each. This also seems to be the trend in China today. I do not foresee auto- mation taking over completely, but I think we will also see growth on that front, especially with the growing economy. For example, we have seen in other countries that this growth has led to people moving from the countryside to the cities – and this situ ation will force farmers to look for more automated solutions in China.
Cover photo shows one of many farms by Shengmu Dairy in the Ulan Buh desert in Inner-Mongolia. Photo courtesy of China Shengmu Organic Milk Ltd.
Arla Foods, headquartered in Viby, Denmark is the fourth largest dairy company in the world in terms of milk intake and the world’s largest manufacturer of organic dairy products. The cooperative is owned by over 9,400 dairy farmers in West- ern Europe and Scandinavia. The current owners are based in seven countries: Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Germany, Bel- gium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. China Mengniu Dairy Co., Ltd, headquartered in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China, manufactures and distributes dairy products, operating through the following segments: liquid milk products, ice cream products, milk powder products, etc. It is China’s second leading dairy enterprise, ranking among the top ten dairy enterprises in the world since 2017. Arla Foods and China Mengnui Dairy Company founded CDMTCC in 2012, with the main aim being to improve dairy farming in China and take the sector to the next level.
▶ DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 8, No. 2, 2021 9
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