Prime Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy started the Jagananna Palavelluva-AP Amul project in the West Godavari district practically from his camp office on Friday.
On the occasion, he said the project should give a boost to the empowerment of women’s self-help groups by promoting milk cooperatives in the state sector.
The implementation of the project started on December 2nd. Milk is collected in 722 villages in Guntur, Chittoor, Kadapa and Prakasam districts. Milk is now being collected from 153 villages in the West Godavari district.
The CM said the government was able to pay farmers decent prices through its association with Amul, the country’s largest dairy cooperative, which is owned by all dairy farmers.
Farmers earned 5 to 15 yen more per liter under the Amul project.
The Chief Minister said that so far 52.93 lakh liters of milk have been collected from 13,739 dairy farmers in 722 villages in the districts of Guntur, Chittoor, Kadapa and Prakasam, where a sum of 24.54 billion rupees has been paid.
Amul paid 4.06 billion yen more than the previous total price.
As part of the Amul project, bulk milk refrigeration units and automatic milk collection units would be set up in 9,899 villages over the next two years at a cost of ₹ 4,000 crore.
Amul MD RS Sodhi said the Amul business is run by farmers to whom the profits are passed on.
Minister of Fisheries and Animal Husbandry S. Appalaraju, Agriculture Special Secretary Poonam Malakondaiah and AP Dairy Development Cooperative Federation MD Babu. A were present at the event.