A Dairy Farm Centre of Excellence in India

India Dairy & Beef Cattle, Sheep & Goat Production

PUM aims for long-term relationships with clients to achieve maximum impact. During such a trajectory, PUM can offer various services for the sustainable development of the client’s business. CEO Nikki Pilania-Chaudhary of Mango Dairies in India received online advice, advice on location, and a grant from PUM’s fund Hans Blankert Fund (HBF). She can now better feed her cows, use natural fertiliser, produce more healthy and nutritious milk, reach more customers including school children, and share her knowledge with partner farmers.

Mango Dairies is involved in agriculture in rural India, more precisely in Pilibhit. They produce between 250 litres to 400 litres of milk per day which they process on site into packaged fresh milk, cottage cheese, yoghurt and curd. They deliver to their own local shop, private customers in the city and schools in the neighbourhood. The company is led by female CEO Nikki Pilania- Chaudhary: “We have strong ambitions to expand our milk production, and are therefore in the process improving our business and joining forces with other farms. We would love to provide more schools with our healthy, tasty and nutritious packaged milk. Farm fresh milk does not only retain all the essential minerals and vitamins vital for the children’s health, but also retains the natural taste and flavour. Kids love our milk!”

PUM expert in Dairy and Beef Cattle, Tjeerd Dijkstra, remotely shared his knowledge with Mango Dairies:

“They asked my advice on improving the various aspects of animal husbandry. Through online sessions we discussed the reduction of the feeding costs; more balanced feeding; achieving micro and macro mineral management; and reducing the infertility of the cows. Final goal was to expand their herd and achieve a daily production of 10000 litres at a reasonable production cost. Important for Mango Dairies is to efficiently and sustainably produce consistent quality raw milk within standard norms, during the entire year.” Later, Tjeerd visited the farm in India and continued working on the issues already discussed during online. More specifically, he advised on how to increase the milk production of fresh cows, on different aspects of rearing young stock; and on manure management.

Natural fertiliser

One of the activities involved in the milk production process is producing feed for the cows. At Mango Dairies, they have plots for different food crops and Tjeerd noted the following: “At the moment, the cattle slurry is not used as natural fertiliser, but wasted. Instead, they use artificial manure to let the crops grow optimally. It would be ideal if they could collect the manure in a basin to mix it with water. Using pumps and pipes, they can utilise the cattle slurry as fertiliser for their crop fields. This will not only result in a lower purchase of artificial manure, but the organic matter content in the soil will increase leading to higher soil fertility.”

Hans Blankert Fund

Tjeerd and the client submitted a request with PUM’s fund Hans Blankert Fund (HBF) to partially invest in the system to use organic natural fertiliser. Jan Trapman, HBF Grant Coordinator, approved the application: “At PUM, we do everything we can to support our clients to grow their business, innovate and improve their sustainability. However, they are not always able to do so on their own and may require additional funds to purchase machines, equipment or tools. We have established the HBF to make investments of this kind possible. The fund also has a special facility to stimulate female entrepreneurship, as is the case for Mango Dairies, granting them a higher amount with a lower own contribution.”

The execution of the HBF investment was successfully handled by CEO Nikki, who managed the suppliers to deliver and place the materials on time. The staff of Mango Dairies worked hard on digging and laying the pipelines, excavating the concrete storage. The whole fertiliser system has been implemented successfully.

Nikki Pilania- Chaudhary

CEO Mango Dairies

“With the support of PUM, we strengthen our example function for other dairy farms in the area. The advice of PUM expert Tjeerd Dijkstra has improved many aspects of our animal husbandry. With the investment of HBF we save on artificial fertiliser costs and improve our soil quality”.

Centre of excellence

Being a farmer first, Nikki believes that farmers need to be made shareholders in the entire process. Right from growing feed crops, cow farming and processing the milk to final sales of the finished products to consumers. As a Centre of Excellence, Mango Dairies will provide key services to their partners and share their knowledge on efficient raw milk production, preferably using a closed loop production process.