Milk production drops up to 50% due to blockages

The roadblocks continue to affect milk production, which has already fallen by 50% in Arequipa, one of the country’s main dairy basins.

According to Majes Dairy Farmers Association (AGLM)the shutdown prevents the entry of materials needed to continue production, including soybean meal and meal.

“The cake and soybean meal don’t make it to the stables to feed the cows well, which is why we lose just over 50% milk production”, – said Oskar Wilka, president of AGLM.

The above shipments come from Bolivia and cannot enter the region as the road between Arequipa and Puno remains blocked.

This situation affects about 1500 cattle families is intended for the production of milk, which is regularly 600 thousand liters per day.

Dairy farmers have already suffered from the first protests registered in December as they had to throw away milk they could not collect for 12-15 days.

“In those days, we dumped our products, with milk discarded, the fruits of our labor were lost. Over SGD 20 million has been lost in that time,” he told the Correo newspaper.

Now, with the new blockade, they are registering an additional loss of around SGD 10 million. In other words, dairy farmers in Arequipa are losing around S$30 million due to the protests.

Fork warns that this situation could lead to bankruptcy ranchers and lead to the loss of 200 thousand direct and indirect jobs.

“We can no longer keep the chain of payments, and this is leading us to bankruptcy,” he said.

For its part, the Arequipa Regional Dairy Board indicated last week that the dairy sector was already losing more than S$50 million.

It is worth noting that Arequipa represents 16.77% milk productionsecond only to Lima (16.94%) and Cajamarca (17.12%).