Conclusions

At present only a small fraction of the milk produced by smallholders in Tanzania enter the commercial market owing to the lack of milk collecting centres in rural areas, low producer prices for milk and scarcity of small scale processing techniques. Yet making this milk available to consumers would improve both the economic status of the smallholders and the nutritional status of the population. Dairy products that can be manufactured by small scale dairies include fermented milk, butter, ghee and some cheese. Some technologies for their improvement have been adopted to suit local conditions and some of the modified processing techniques have been tried successfully in Kilimanjaro area and SUA. These need to be extended to other parts of the country. Therefore more research, training and extension work is needed to ensure that the smallholder milk producers in various farming systems countrywide acquire the improved milk handling and processing techniques.

It is suggested that sponsorship should be aquired to train the small holder farmers on milk processing preferably at SUA where there are the facilities and experties for training.