Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) disclosed that it has planned to produce 9.8 billion liters of milk in 2023/24 fiscal year out of cattle, camel and goat milk.

MoA's Livestock and Fishery Resource Team Leader Lema Gemeda told the Ethiopia Press Agency said that the Ministry has set to attain 9.8 billion liters of milk in this fiscal year.

"In order to achieve the plan we are working on problem solving strategies such as improving breed cattle, ensuring safe fodder and improving marketing linkage, awareness creation would also be applied in relation to how to feed cattle, what kind of Fodder should be used and other related tasks. Although the volume of milk production has increased as per annual consumption, it is hard to quench the demand coming from the society, and the nation could hardly meet the need," Lema added.

Supporting the above idea, MoA's Livestock and Fishery Resource Expert Segni Chemeda stated that the volume of milk production is annuallyincreasing,a wide gap has been witnessed in due course of addressing milk demand of the community.

According to Segni, lack of hybrid species of cattle, absence of quality and safe fodder as well as lack of market linkage are attributable to the minimal intensity of dairy production in Ethiopia.

In order to solve problems regarding milk production quality, the government has been investing in the improvement of breeding improved cattle species, provision of quality and safe cattle fodder through awareness creation among the farming community, he stated.

According to WHO report, a person needs to drink 200 liters a year to stay healthy. In Ethiopia on average a person drinks 66 liters of milk per year, which means some 140 liters deficit from WHO recommendation. The milk production accounted for 8.6 billion liters over the last fiscal year, Segni said.