Economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic on milk unions and milk vendors

In this present study, an attempt was made to identify and compute the scale of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic occurred to the two most important players of the milk supply chain in India, i.e., cooperative milk unions (3 milk unions, 18 dairy cooperative societies) and milk vendors (60 numbers). The study was conducted in Howrah, Nadia and N-24 Parganas districts of West Bengal state, India. The data collected from the respondents covered three periods of the first wave of the COVID- 19 pandemic i.e. pre-lockdown (January 01 2020 to March 23 2020), lockdown (March 24 2020 to May 31 2020) and postlockdown period (June 01 2020 to December 31 2020). The analysis revealed that the total marketing margin of cooperative milk unions from the sale of single-toned milk increased by 6 to 7 per cent and total marketing cost decreased by 8 to 11 per cent. During the lockdown period, there was a sudden hike in sales of single-toned milk (5 to 25%), curd (5 to 56%), paneer (11 to 26%) and ghee (40 to 80%) but the sale of lassi (-25 to -50%) and peda (-50 to -80%) decreased. The sale of milk was reduced by around 64 to 100 per cent during the lockdown period and net returns decreased substantially (70 to 680%) for all types of vendors during the pandemic. Vendors supplying milk to hotels and small processors were the most affected during the lockdown period.