The Role of Milk Collecting Centers in Socio-Economic Situation of Dairy Animal Keepers

Most of the poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. Experience shows that in many countries animal husbandry development and increasing investment specially is a way to challenge the poverty in rural areas. This is obvious that, small producers have key role in dairy markets and dairy development but they have no power to bargain and negotiate for higher prices, access to the marketing, and up to date their knowledge and skills. They have few animals with low milk production and low quality. In these situations, cooperatives are best choice to organizing smallholder milk producers. With such organization smallholder milk producers are able to increase their competition power. Milk collecting centers as a place to implementing this purpose can play a big role. These centers in the production stage can help smallholder milk producers to have access to the dairy animals with high quality, feeds, veterinary and other supplies. This centers in the marketing stage, with adopting politics for example punishment and rewards politics, and preparing training courses help to improve milk quality and to reduce milk microbial. This article investigates the role of milk collecting center to improve smallholder milk producerʹs situation, and their conditions in the Esfahan area.