Bomet County governor H.E. Isaac Ruto yesterday officially opened two milk cooling plants in two sub-counties. The cooling plants, Chesoen Farmers Cooperative Milk Cooling Plant and Kipsonoi Multipurpose Cooling Plant have a capacity of 2000 liters and 3500 liters of milk respectively.
The projects, funded by the County Government of Bomet, will help boost milk prices as farmers pool their milk before selling to processors in bulk. The plants are run as multi-purpose cooperative entities with the support of Agribusiness Department. The county government has helped set up 19 cooling plants across the county with 8 plants in operation so far.
“We as a county government request farmers supplying milk to the cooling plants to join the ward multi-purpose cooperative societies to enable them access credit facilities and have a collective bargaining power with milk processors.” The governor remarked.
Farmers in the region sell their milk mainly to Brookside and New Kenya Co-operative Creameries. Governor Isaac Ruto added that the county government is in the process of setting up a 500 million shillings milk processing plant in Bomet town to process and package milk both for domestic and export markets.
The county government also offers subsidized AI services in a bid to upgrade the quality of stock. The program has seen farmers paying as little as 200 shillings for the service. “Before the intervention by the county government, farmers used to pay between Sh 1,200 and Sh 1,500 per cow to private AI service providers,” Agribusiness CEC Hon Alex Kirui said.