Nyeri Dairy farmers’ earnings from Brookside increased by 10 per cent to Sh280 million last year as more farmers in the region turned to the business.
John Gethi, Brookside’s director of milk procurement, attributed the earnings to increased milk intake on the back of better dairy husbandry after training.
“Many farmers in Nyeri and Nyandarua counties have chosen to do dairy farming due to guaranteed income from the enterprise,” Mr Gethi said yesterday in Mukurweini , Nyeri, during a training session for farmers.
Official data shows that raw milk delivered to processors grew 14.2 per cent to 425 million litres in the eight months of the year to May from 353 million in a similar period in 2013.
The processed milk market has increasingly become lucrative with Africa’s richest man, Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, set to establish a powdered milk plant in the coastal town of Kilifi.
This signals a fight for raw milk with firms like Brookside, which had contracted more than 160,000 dairy farmers by last year.
Mr Gethi said Brookside will enlist more raw milk suppliers across the country to defend its market leadership of 44 per cent.
It targets more than 40,000 new farmers over the next two years.
