WEB DESK: In Pakistan specially in rural areas milk business totally changed the life of people and remove the poverty.

Asal Khan, Director General, Livestock and Dairy Development Department Extension KP said that milk business has great potential in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the department was encouraging it due to its vast employment market at rural areas besides financial laurels.

Declaring dairy is one of the major sub-sector of agriculture, he said this sector contributes, along with livestock, about 60.6% of value added agriculture and 11.7% of the total GDP. Pakistan is ranked as the 4th largest dairy producer in the world and about 97% of the milk consumed is in fresh form and remaining 3 % is processed (UHT) in Pakistan.

The average milk production in Pakistan for the past 10 years has remained around 50 million tons with highest milk production in Punjab and Sindh provinces, followed by KP, and Balochistan. The estimated production of milk in Punjab is about 63%, Sindh as 23%, KP as 12% and Balochistan as 2% of the total milk production in Pakistan. The country’s milk is being preferred at Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, UAE, Hong Kong China and Tajkistan, said Asal Khan.

“The main objective of the Livestock and Dairy Development Department (Extension) is to alleviate poverty by improving the socio-economic condition of farmers through enhancing the productivity of their livestock in terms of milk, meat and other livestock products.”

He said livestock sector of our province has great potential of making contribution to poverty alleviation but this potential is still untapped. He said the major constraint in making meaningful efforts for enhancing per animal productivity are the farmer’s shyness to adopt improved farm practices and the investors’ reluctance to invest in the sector both mainly lack of access to the required information.

Keeping in view of the above challenges, he said the department has established Information Cell at Peshawar for efficient dissemination of the needed information to all stakeholders in the province.

An official website of the department was launched for education and information of milk sellers and farmers and hoped that the information once put on the website shall contribute in bringing about desirable changes in the knowledge, attitude and skills of the livestock stakeholders across the board.

Dr Asal Khan said that work on five new mega projects including genetic improvement through cross breeding of quality breed, community meat and dairy development project, establishment of veterinary dispensaries in rented buildings, establishment of environmentally controlled poultry housing shed systems and setting up state-of the- art veterinary university helped bring positive improvement in people’s lives.