Nestle beefs up Chinese dairy farms with training

Nestle hopes to help boost China's dairy industry by training people in dairy farming and farm management, said Lu Ming, technical head of dairy and nutrition at Nestle (China) Ltd.

The Swiss food giant's dairy farming institute in Shuangcheng district in Harbin, the capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, has trained more than 800 people since it was started in October 2014.

Lu said the institute imparts professional expertise, including how to prevent and control diseases, increase milk production of each herd, improve milk quality and save feed.

Xue Jiangang, from East China's Shandong province, said the farm where he works improved a lot after he took a milking and milk quality course at the institute in March.

He said milking speed at his farm increased and the incidence of cow mastitis, which is inflammation of the udder tissue, dropped from 5 percent to less than 1 percent.

Lu said training at the institute would benefit not only farmers but also Nestle. Nestle can provide its customers with safer and better milk-related products if basic conditions of dairy farming are improved, he added.

Experts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a long history of dairy education in the United States, and other professional organizations have designed training programs for the institute.

Lu said the institute also hopes to help small family farms that have supplied Nestle with milk over the past years expand their farms and have a better career path.

Apart from classrooms, dormitories and laboratories, the 600,000-square-meter institute has three demonstration farms of varying sizes. The smallest one is designed for 200 to 400 cows that can provide owners of small farms with practical guidance on how to manage a larger farm. The other two are used to help larger farms expand and improve, according to the institute's website.

Insiders said the Chinese government is encouraging the establishment and development of large and standardized dairy farms to promote sustainable and healthy development of the country's dairy industry.

Partners of the company's institute range from universities and animal feed companies to animal nutrition and health companies. The partnerships enable the institute to provide support and solutions in all main aspects of dairy farming and production, the institute's website said.

In 1990, Nestle's first dairy factory in China went into operation in Shuangcheng. Over the past decades, Nestle has developed close relationships with local farmers, milk suppliers and government agencies in Shuangcheng, Lu said.

He said Nestle would not have made its leaps in development if the Shuangcheng government had not greatly supported the company.

Nestle has purchased more than 300,000 metric tons of milk annually from farmers in Shuangcheng in recent years. To promote dairy farming in Shuangcheng, Nestle has provided thousands of local farmers with free training and technical assistance since the late 1980s. It also cooperated with a local bank to help farmers receive financing to develop their farms last year.

Nestle and the Shuangcheng government spent 10 million yuan ($1.56 million) buying milking equipment in 2012 that it allowed local farmers to use for free.

Contact the writers through songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn