Milking the big dairy

The Philippine government's dairy program, which, for decades, was plagued with corruption, expensive failed experiments and poor planning, can see a ray of hope in a dual-purpose cattle breed developed in Brazil: the Girolando, a breed with which we hoped to achieve the target of producing 10 percent of the country's milk and dairy needs.

The Girolando, which got its name from the Brazilian Gir and Holland's Holstein or Holando, has been breaking records in milk production even under harsh and hot climatic conditions, especially in Brazil where the temperature ranges from 25 to 35 degrees Celsius.

A Girolando cow currently holds the world record in the greatest number of liters of milk produced in one day at 109 liters, effectively dislodging the Holstein as the most prolific dairy cattle breed.

The funny story is that the Girolando was developed because of an "accidental fire" when a Holstein bull jumped his corral and mated with a Brazilian Gir cow.

When the female offspring showed tremendous milking production, every Brazilian rancher started crossbreeding the Girs to the Holandos in the 1970s.

Today, the Girolando is present in the US, Mexico, Argentina and several other countries.

There are Girolando cows in the Philippine Carabao Center in Muñoz and I was told that even under adverse conditions, they are performing very well.

The adaptability of the Girolando to tropical climate is what captured my interest in acquiring the breed for the Philippine Dairy Program to finally improve the country's embarrassing dairy and milk production of 1.8 percent of the total national requirement.

The only way this could be reversed is to really develop the commercial dairy cattle industry.

While former President Duterte's Department of Agriculture fully supported the Dairy Buffalo program and the Dairy Goat Program, the milk produced in these programs is largely for small cottage and specialty industries.

Even India, which prides itself as the No. 1 promoter of Buffalo milk, admits that it was only when the Dairy Cattle Program was given push did the country progress dramatically in its dairy production.

The Philippines also launched several initiatives to develop its Dairy Cattle Program, but it was plagued with failed expensive experiments, poor planning and corruption.

Several dairy breeds were tested in the country–Holstein, Holstein-Sahiwal, Holstein-Jersey — but even if it was established that these breeds did not perform well under Philippine conditions, the importation of breeding stocks continued.

The last disastrous importation by government was a batch of about 300 Holsteins, which did not have any takers when these arrived in the Philippines.

Many of these Holsteins were left in a ranch in Batangas, which served as the quarantine area and which later absorbed the dairy cattle because the quarantine and maintenance fees exceeded the value of the cattle.

Previous procurements were also marked with overpricing as in the case of the 3,000 buffalos imported from Brazil, which cost government over P350,000 each.

At least 80 of those buffalos imported in mid-2000 proved positive for FMD and had to be destroyed.

In the National Dairy Roadmap that we had drafted, all three fields — buffalo, goat and cattle — will be integrated and we will encourage private sector participation.

With this shift in the strategy is the assurance that corruption would have no place in the program and good planning through stakeholder consultation would be the norm.

Former Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol was in Brazil in 2017 for a Study Visit of the Brazilian Agriculture, with a plan to import the country's Girolando cattle for at least five years starting with 10,000 heads in 2018 to as high as 250,000 cows in 2022 to boost the Philippine cattle stock and improve its milk production.