Farm gate price for raw milk gone up by 13 cents per litre

Good news for dairy farmers as the farm gate price for raw milk has gone up by 13 cents per litre.

This is effective from the 3rd of this month.

The Acting CEO of Fiji Cooperative Dairy Company Limited Kushmendra Prasad says this means that diary farmers will now get 97 cents per litre. Those farmers who are registered for VAT will get $1.06 cents per litre.

He says they welcome this move as dairy farmers have been burdened with a price of 83 cents per litre and it has been difficult for farmers to invest in replacing cattle.

There are 246 active dairy farmers who are supplying milk to Fiji Cooperative Dairy Company Limited.

Prasad says there was close to nine million liters of milk production in Fiji in 2012 and later there was a significant decline in production due to cattle diseases.

This happened between 2014 and 2017 where milk production went down from 9 million to 5.7 million liters of milk which is the current production.