Allowing foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail may spell serious problems for the dairy farmers in India. Organized retail by definition being monopolistic could make matters difficult for farmers and processors. Integration with global retail chain would expose them to the vagaries of the international market, said R S Sodhi Managing Director, Gujarat Milk Marketing Federation while talking to the indiancooperative.com on phone on Thursday after attending international conference on dairy in Ahmadabad.
R S Sodhi lauded the role of cooperatives in India. Drawing a comparison between the west and India he said- while farmers’ share in consumer dollar has gone down in the west, farmers in India have got about 70-80 percent of consumer rupee. He put it down to what he called the cooperative factor here in India , the cooperative farmers overwhelmingly control the trinity of production, processing and marketing, he added.
According to Mr Sodhi, while farmers in the Euro-American belt are pathetically dependent on mncs for marketing, the cooperatives do it here connecting farmers to huge urban markets and making a safe future possible for them.
Reeling off figures the MD told the indiancooperative.com correspondent that Amul has an annual turnover of 12 thousand crore, collecting 14 million litres of milk per day and maintaining a supply chain linking over 3 million farmers from 15 districts of gujarat, 40 dairy plants, 47 stock points, 5 thousand distributors , 7 million retail stores spread across India and parts of the world.