Technology can bring down dairy industry's cost

China's dairy industry must invest further into science and technologies to lower the cost of raw milk production to cope with the overproduction crisis, an official with the ministry of agriculture has said.

Ma Ying, deputy director of the dairy industry management office of the Ministry of Agriculture, said the contribution of science and technology only took up less than 50 percent of the country's dairy industry growth, far below the level of 70 to 80 percent in Western countries.

Ma said the large relatively large production input in the country's dairy industry has increased the costs, and thus reduce the profit margins for the farmers.

“The lack of science and technology investment has deterred the transformation of the dairy industry with the production of high-quality milk only took up a minor part of the country's dairy production,” she said at the opening ceremony of the 4th International Symposium on Dairy Cow Nutrition and Milk Quality.

Meanwhile, the lack of technological input in the dairy industry has also deterred the production of high-quality dairy products, she said.

China's dairy industry is faced with an overproduction crisis starting from 2014, as farmers are forced to kill the cows and pour the raw milks due to sluggish market demand coupled with competition from imported milk products.

Gu Jicheng, secretary general of the China Dairy Industry Association, said the country has more than 14 million cows, with a yearly production volume of 38 million metric tons of dairy products.

Meanwhile, the average milk consumption in the country was only half the average of Asian levels and one third of the world average levels, he said.