Brookside, a dairy processing company in Kenya has increased the price of one liter of milk it buys from 160,000 contracted farmers from Sh31 to Sh36 to cushion farmers against drought effects due to the delay of the long season rains.
The price is set to benefit more than 300 dairy farmers groups supplying milk to the processor which manufactures pasteurized milk, cream, butter, yoghurt and ghee.
“At the moment the dry weather has led to increase in prices of our consumer products that’s why we intend to pass these benefits to our farmers,” said John Gethi, the director of milk procurement at the company.
In 2018, the company recorded a 30 per cent increase in milk supplies from farmers after increasing farm gate prices by 42 per cent.
The company has a daily processing capacity of 1.5m liters a day.
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According to Kenya Dairy Board, the industry regulator, milk intake in the formal market dropped by five per cent in the last three months due to the effects of dry weather.
In this, milk delivered to processors has been declining since January from 56m kilos to 54m kilos in January to 53m kilos in March.