Banner image: Dorice (left) and her mother Beatrice pose for a photo on their dairy farm. 

Beatrice Mlay is a dairy farmer from Mkabala Village in Muheza, Tanzania. Her small backyard farm holds seven cows, a chicken coop, and a terraced garden for growing crops. She started keeping cows in 2011 with two local breed cows but just three years later, she decided to sell her cows because she wasn’t producing enough milk to make it worth her while, as the cows were only producing an average of five to six liters  of milk per cow, per day.

The Daily Challenges of Dairy Farming

Although it can be reliable source of income, dairy farming can be challenging for smallholders in Tanzania. That’s because rural farmers like Beatrice face challenges accessing modern technologies and inputs for their farm. Inputs and services that some farmers may take for granted — like quality feed and veterinary expertise — can be difficult to come by. Likewise, local cattle breeds only produce a few liters of milk per day, making it difficult for farmers to justify investments in their dairy farm. 


Beatrice Mlay gives a tour of her backyard dairy farm.

Giving Dairy Farming Another Shot

In 2019, Beatrice decided to give dairy farming another shot after receiving two improved heifers financed by Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) through a cooperative called Chawamu, with financial support from the Tanzania Inclusive Processor-Producer Partnerships in Dairy (TI3P) project, implemented in partnership with Venture37, Bain & Company, Inc., Heifer International, Tanager International, and the Global Dairy Platform. With the improved breeds, Beatrice immediately noticed a difference, and was inspired to keep investing in her farm.
Recognizing the important role that animal nutrition plays in a productive dairy farm, TI3P also provided Beatrice with Napier and sugar graze cuttings to plant in her garden plot, which she uses to feed her own cows and to supply to other farms.

Building Skills, Boosting Production

The new breeds and access to feed made a critical difference to Beatrice’s overall production. Yet farm management requires a host of technical skills that aren’t always evident to new farmers – so Beatrice turned to TI3P for training to boost her overall farm management skills. Through the program, she attended several training sessions on topics such as milk handling and quality control, pasture and fodder production, feeding, breeding, and disease prevention. These training sessions equipped her with the skills and confidence to further boost her production and minimize losses.

Beatrice explains that these changes are making a huge difference on her farm: “Now, I produce an average of 20 to 25 liters per day, per cow. This improvement is due to the improved cow breeds I received, the training sessions, and the good concentrates I use to feed my cows. I even received a $500 grant from TI3P to buy prover concentrates, improve my cowshed, and expand my pasture.” With these changes, Beatrice is now producing around five times as much milk, per cow, as she was the first time around. She has even inspired one of her daughters, Dorice, to get involved in the dairy business.

A Family Affair

Dorice is one of Beatrice’s four children, and she has been inspired by her mother’s successes in the dairy business. Beatrice explains that she helped her daughter get started in the business by providing her with the profits that she made from selling milk to her local dairy cooperative. Beatrice also linked Dorice with TADB, who provided her with a loan to buy five heifers, build a milkshed, and build a two-bedroom house. Critically, she also worked closely with Dorice to train her in dairy farm management - including milking, cleaning, transporting milk, and feeding the cows. Dorice now has five cows and is selling the milk she produces to a local milk collection center.

Inspiring Women and Youth Farmers

Beatrice and Dorice both stress that investing in women and youth farmers is critical — alluding to the fact that these groups often face unique challenges to getting their farms up and running. Dorice explains that, as a young person, accessing capital can often be difficult: “Young people need more mobilization on dairying and need to be provided with startup capital.” Likewise, Beatrice explains that “Women should have special loans with simple bureaucracy,” as well as “training on animal husbandry and management.”

Through TI3P, and its gender-intentional approach to promoting women’s involvement in dairy value chains, Beatrice and Dorice have benefited from the program’s efforts to actively encourage participation of women and youth in the dairy sector, while increasing their access and control over productive assets. The program has trained more than 10,500 women in animal husbandry and management out of more than 32,000 farmers reached. Among the cooperatives that TI3P supports, more than 70 percent of them have at least one women in leadership roles.
 

Dorice Mselemu feeds her dairy cows on a tour of her farm. She explains how the TI3P project has helped both her and her mother to increase their cows' milk production.
 
About the project: Led by the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB), TI3P is enabling public-private partnerships to increase the incomes of small-scale dairy producers in Tanzania. The project is supported by Land O’Lakes Venture37, Bain & Company, Heifer International,Global Dairy Platform and Tanager International.