It is possibly audacious to suggest that a multi-billion-dollar company, one which managed to secure a $3.89 billion after-tax profit last year despite the global negative impact of COVID-19, has disappointed. Not its shareholders, obviously. But surely patriots who want to see Guyana amount to something are disheartened by Demerara Distillers Ltd’s (DDL) decision to increase the annual milk products import bill in order to successfully run its pasteurisation plant, as revealed in a report published in this newspaper on Monday last.
According to the report, the plant is new. It is scheduled to be commissioned in June. However, one cannot help but conclude that the thinking behind it is less avant-garde and more pecuniary. DDL has clearly done its due diligence and found that there is a place for its milk on the market; perhaps it will nudge out the troubled Pinehill brand. Chairman Komal Samaroo told Stabroek News that DDL would import “reconstituted milk” for its plant, which was not set up to pasteurise local cow’s milk, owing to the lack of an “organised dairy sector” in the country.
The company had previously, in October 2018, made overtures towards partnering with the government to develop the dairy industry, a riff on a theme that has been touted by various agriculture ministers over the years. For reasons known at this time only to the stakeholders in that tentative partnership, that idea appears to have been discarded, much like soured milk.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, an overseas-based Guyanese investor stepped into the breach announcing plans to establish a $75 million pasteurisation plant to bottle local cow’s milk. Since there are no mega dairy farms or mega-dairies, as they are called in the country at present, it is unlikely there would have been enough raw milk to effectively supply two pasteurisation plants had DDL taken this route.
It is worth stating that mega-dairies should never be considered here. The local status quo, which allows for cows to graze on pastureland rather than be penned up milk machines, should remain.
Mega-dairies are exactly what they sound like: super factories dedicated to the production of milk and milk products. The largest in the world is probably the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm in China, which reportedly has 100,000 dairy cows. Thousands of these farms exist in the large milk producing and exporting countries in the world – like New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States – and they are fully mechanised, allowing for cow’s milk to remain relatively cheap. This partly explains its allure to consumers.
On the flip side, however, these dairy monstrosities have mostly squeezed small farmers out of the market. In addition, among other things, some of them utilise growth hormones and milk their cows three or four times a day, shortening their lifespan. Furthermore, owing to their sheer size, these farms are major producers of greenhouse gases, like methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, which contribute to global warming.
When the above is considered, along with the fact that over 70 percent of the world’s population is either lactose intolerant or suffer from malabsorption of the sugar found in milk, one wonders why there is not a greater shift away from dairy production than currently exists. Despite the growing popularity of plant-based milks, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that there are over 264 million dairy cows worldwide, producing nearly 600 million tonnes of milk per annum. Milk, according to FAO statistics published in 2016, was the top agricultural commodity in value terms the world over and the global dairy market reached a value of US$718.9 billion in 2019. Simply put, there is money in milk and the big corporations like Nestle, Kraft Heinz, Saputo and Unilever, had long figured this out, hence the mega-dairies.
Aside from pasteurised milk, the dairy industry produces butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, ghee, whey, ice cream, and buttermilk, as well as condensed, evaporated, dried and skim milk, infant formula and other by products. Most Guyanese are familiar with dried (powdered) milk, which is in itself a huge global industry.
Dried milk is obviously easier to transport and therefore lends itself to being exported. Drying also extends the milk’s shelf life and it is as easily reconstituted in someone’s kitchen as it is in a factory. One imagines this is the route planned for the new DDL pasteurisation plant, which, given the advances in technology today and the prosperity of the company, will no doubt employ ultra-high temperature (UHT) processing in reconstituting the milk. Consumers can be assured that the pasteurisation method employed will produce a high-quality product.
Dedication to quality has always been a hallmark of DDL. One only has to look at the number of awards its rums have won over the years at the International Wine and Spirit Competition for confirmation of this. It rightfully prides itself as “one of the leading manufacturing companies in Guyana”. But in a world where food and tastes are constantly evolving, it appears to shy away from innovation.
Instead of reconstituting dried cow’s milk, DDL could have chosen to manufacture coconut milk, for instance. As a plant-based replacement for the animal variety, coconut milk is right up there with soy, almond and oat. Not only would this have lent to reducing Guyana’s $45 billion food import bill, and offered a boost to coconut farmers, but it is a growing industry globally and is forecast to be worth US$1,586.14 million by the end of 2025. Granted, it is not as prosperous as the dairy industry, but planting trees is always going to be infinitely safer for the environment than rearing cows. However, as the saying goes, there’s no use crying over spilt milk.
