MANILA, Philippines -- Thailand is great in cattle dairying. It is 90 percent selfsufficient as far as fresh cow’s milk is concerned compared to 2 percent in the Philippines. There are a few big dairy farms but most of the raisers are small farmers who are members of cooperatives or associations.

Easily the best known small-scale dairy production group is the Zonta Chombung Dairy Cooperative in Chombung, Ratchaburi province, some 130 kilometers southwest of Bangkok.

The co-op consists of only 25 families with family members numbering about a hundred people who work on their dairy farms. The members take care of as few as eight dairy cows but there are those who take care of 30  to 50 cows, all taken care of by family members. There are no workers coming from outside the community.

The co-op members produce anywhere between 2,500 and 5,000 liters of milk every day. The milk collection is processed in a small but well-equipped processing plant right inside the village. Every month the farmers produce milk worth more than one million baht a month. That’s equivalent to about P1.4 million in Philippine money. That’s a lot of purchasing  for people in a remote villagein the countryside.

Most of the farmers have not gone to high-school. They consist mostly of landless people from Bangkok who were settled in the land reform project in Chombung in 1981. In fact only two are college degree holders in the village today. One is Supaksiri Pholkunakorn, a lady who is called Jum by practically everybody who knows her. The other degree holder is a veterinarian who happens to be the husband of Jum. He teaches in school but he is often called upon whenever there is need for veterinary service in the village.

The dairy cooperative is headed by a male protégé of Jum. But Jum is really the spark plug who has been making great things happen in Chombung. Jum is also a native of Bangkok who studied agriculture but without any piece of land before. Her first job after graduation was at the Zonta Village and has been there up to now.

It happened that an NGO headed by a nun, Sister Francis Xavier Bell from Brooklyn, New York, happened to be her seatmate in a bus while she was going to school. The two talked and Sister Francis told Jum that she was helping the poor farmers. The young Jum told her that she was studying agriculture, and could she work with the sister in her work with farmers after graduation?

Sure, the nun was simply too glad to hear her offer. The new settlement was just being opened and Jum helped the first three families who settled there. Later, more settlers joined and now there are about 50 families, 25 of them into dairy farming.

Jum relates that the 1,000 acres (about 400 hectares) allocated to the land reform beneficiaries were unproductive. Only some bushes and grasses grew. Sister Francis suggested that since grass was plentiful then, they should take care of cattle.

But Jum protested. She told Sister Francis that most Thais are Buddhists and they won’t kill the cows. Well and good, the good sister countered. Then they should take care of milking cows! And that was the beginning of their involvement in dairying in 1981.

The projects of Sister Francis (there are others besides Zonta Village in Chombung) are supported by Zonta International. And they were able to solicit donations for their dairy project. Jum herself was sent to Australia and New Zealand to train on dairy production, animal nutrition, artificial insemination, pasture management, milk processing and other things related to dairying.

The Zonta Dairy Village has also become a training center not only for the resident farmers but also those interested in small-scale dairy production. In fact, several trainees and visitors from the Philippines have gone to Chombung. And Jumhas been consulted by some dairy farmers from the Philippines. In fact, the processing plant of Danilo Fausto in Talavera, Nueva Ecija was built through the help of Jum. Fausto said that a European company had offered to build the processing plant for P2 million. Instead, Jum helped build it for just P700,000. Fausto, by the way, is the chairman of the Dairy Federation of the Philippines. He has his own scheme of carabao milk production involving small-scale farmers who he calls his partners in the business.

Jum said that they had to put up their own processing plant because they are far from the big milk manufacturing companies. Many of the equipment were donated by friends of Zonta from New Zealand, Australia, Europe and elsewhere.

There are only three full-time employees in the milk factory where they make pasteurized milk, ice cream, yoghurt, cheese and other milk products. One part-time worker is a fellow who receives the milk delivered by the farmers in the morning and in the afternoon. It has high-tech facilities. Each time a farmer delivers his milk to the processing plant, a small sample is taken and passed through an analyzer. Immediately, the quality of the milk is known. The test reveals in less than a minute the fat and protein contents of the milk.

Jum has her own dairy herd of 50 animals, 20 of them in the milk line. Because she is often invited to talk about dairying outside of her village, she has hired a husband and wife to take care of the animals, with her supervision of course. She claims that the husband and wife could well take care of the 50 animals with some spare time for other things. The two do the feeding and milking. They have a milking machine so it just takes a short time to milk 20 cows. Depending on the stage of lactation of the cows, they can get 200 to 300 liters per day which the processing plant pays Bt17 per liter.

Jum has 10 hectares as her own allocation in the land reform settlement. She plants forage grasses on five hectares which the couple cut and carry to the animals. They have a grass harvester and chopper so the feeding is simple. Besides grass, the animals are also fed with concentrate eat milking time.