Three Tier Milk Collection System

Hello everyone. My name is Pranav Vashisht and I’m a graduate student of Food Science. Today I’m going to tell you about the famous three-tier milk collection system that is followed by the Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL), India which made this cooperative as the largest dairy cooperative of the country.

This system was introduced by the Dr Verghese Kurian, a father of the white revolution. This consists of Village Society, the District Union and the State Federation.

Under Village Society, there are dairy cooperative societies (DCS). Each DCS has a milk collection centre where members take milk every day. The milk given by each farmer is tested for quality and payment is given based on the percentage of fat and solids not fat (SNF) in it. Further, at the end of each year, the profit earned by DCS is distributed as a bonus among the farmers and members depending on their contribution.

The work of District Union is to buy all the milk from DCSs and then process it and distribute it in the market. These Unions also provides inputs and services to DCSs like feed, veterinary care etc.

The state federation is responsible for the marketing of the fluid milk and products of member union. Some federations also manufacture feed and support other union activities.

The members say that the reasons behind the success of Anand Pattern are the involvement of people in their own development, control of institutional infrastructure by the farmers and the direct linkage of producer with consumers.

Although this system was introduced in 1970 still now this system is seen as an ideal system for milk processing and it is followed by many big dairy cooperatives throughout the world.