Grant: Dairy Productivity for Farm Households in Bangladesh

Farmer milks her cow, Bangladesh, India, 2008. Photo by Prashant Panjiar

A farmer in Bangladesh milks her cow.

About the Grantee:
CARE, a 60-year-old humanitarian aid and poverty-fighting organization, maintains a presence in all 64 districts in Bangladesh.

Grant Amount: $5.3 million

Grant Term: October 2007—September 2011

Grant Location: Bangladesh

Partners: The Bangladeshi Department of Livestock; Telemedicine Reference Center Ltd.; BRAC; MilkVita; Rangpur Dairy; PRAN Dairy; Bangladesh Agricultural University; Quality Feed; Ejab.

This grant includes a plan for third-party evaluation.

Grantee: CARE

Bangladesh currently imports 40 percent of the milk it consumes, and the demand for fresh dairy products is rising. This represents an attractive opportunity for Bangladeshi dairy farmers, most of whom live on less than $1 per day. These farmers, however, face several constraints that prevent them from tapping into this market. First, because they don’t have access to the latest agronomic methods, their cows don’t generate as much milk as they could. Second, they don’t have access to effective means to store and transport their milk so they can sell it in the formal marketplace.

Farmers can increase the productivity of their cows by organizing into groups that can, for example, raise awareness of better farm practices and buy feed at low prices. They can also work closely with community veterinary health workers. Moreover, they can sell the extra milk in formal markets if they have access to ways to store and transport their milk.

This grant to CARE is designed to help these farmers double their dairy-related incomes (from less than $70 per year to $140 to $200 per year). This project is an extension of a smaller pilot project in Bangladesh.