Rescuing Protein-istan?

I remember vividly the scenario of our family farm three decades ago. We were an average sized farming family from Central Punjab, and our output back then is telling. Let us start with some basic statistics. My grandfather would have, on average, three milking animals. On average, each one would yield eight liters of milk daily at 40 grams of protein per liter. That comes to 320 grams per animal and a total of 960 grams of protein on a daily basis. For a good-sized family of 10 family members, it would be almost 96 grams per member. The only dairy product we could sell was desi ghee, or the ‘fat’. 

This meant all of the protein was left for ourselves. It would either be consumed either by the family or shared within our village as ‘lassi’, which came as a by-product of the ghee making process. Now imagine only half the population of our village as animal owners, which translates into approximately 50 grams of protein for each member of our village. Of course, the distribution was not exactly equitable, but the overall average for our fellow villagers was much more than the World Health Organization recommendations of at least 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight per day. 

Any serious effort to understand ‘malnutrition’ in Pakistan must focus on the most critical macro nutrient: protein. Pakistan, except for some parts, was blessed to have a great source of high-quality protein. Up until the 1990s, an average Pakistani would have a lot higher muscle mass and taller stature than today’s youth. We may attribute it to many factors, but the consensus among health experts suggests nutrition as contributing around 80% to overall wellness. This means the unavailability of ‘affordable’ and quality protein has led to this visible and costly decline in public health. 

We have badly failed to maintain the production of protein as our population has multiplied in recent decades. Our region has been inhabited by pastoral farmers for millennia. Even today, Pakistan has one of the highest animal head counts and remains a big player in milk production. Sadly, the production remains seriously suboptimal, and we import milk products around the globe to meet our local demand, even at historically low consumption levels. Imagine Pakistan imports dairy products from Saudi Arabia, that too at highly competitive rates. 

One of the ‘mediocre narratitives’ being thrown around is labeling Pakistan as a place where ‘pure milk’ is not available. This is nothing more than ‘moral policing’ of an economic failure. Being a farmer producing milk commercially, it pains me to see both producers and consumers suffering from policies that are ‘poisonous’ for both these groups. There is simply one poor policy decision that caused destruction to everything around the dairy ecosystem in the last few decades, and that is the government’s obsession to control milk prices, rather than milk quality.

While the world controls and regulates quality, our state employees are paid to keep prices well under production costs. This literally translates to ‘incentivizing’ adulteration. Hence, a large number of middlemen operate to cash it. When adulteration is unchecked, farmers get prices at middleman’s diktat because free markets supply and demand are not applicable. 

A farmer operating at such low margins would actually be making losses but would be unaware of this fact because he would not understand the opportunity cost for renting the same land to someone else. In recent years, modern dairy farming has been quite popular, with farmers making serious investments in importing animals and setting up advanced infrastructure, but the business feasibility remains a very tough one, with a very high percentage of closures. The only route to maintaining profits is the ‘ farm to table model’, wherein the farmers take control of the post production supply chain and target affluent classes to get the right price of their product. This is done by packaging the milk to bypass government regulation of prices. This creates a parallel regulation regime, keeping the majority of producers in miserable conditions. 

Except for the routine media reports regarding discarding of adulterated milk, no serious effort is being done to actually ensure that only pure milk reaches the consumer. Pakistan’s Diabetic Incidence rate is second only to a small city state of Kuwait, with nearly 30% of Pakistanis above 30 years being stricken by this metabolic catastrophe. Such humungous numbers cannot be catered by our healthcare system, nor can these chronic patients be considered productive members for the economy in the longer term. In the absence of affordable protein, we tend to consume calories from unhealthy sources like fats, carbs or sugars, which have led us to this pandemic. 

The latest understanding among health professionals requires high muscle mass in young age to be maintained until later in life, as a guard against such metabolic disorders, which means intake of sufficient high quality protein food, like milk. Controlling adulteration would certainly breathe life into our giant dairy sector. The rural economy has enough dairy infrastructures to respond to any incentive, attracting more investments, creating employment opportunities and bringing efficiency, leading to competitive prices in the long run. As someone who has worked as a farmer and observed dairy business models around the globe, I believe we can produce high quality milk at globally competitive prices leading to surplus production for all kinds of value additions. 

Pakistan’s livestock sector is nearly 12% of our GDP, where dairy is the most significant sub sector, with the potential to revolutionize the rural economy. Our policy makers need to understand that the only route to creating exportable surpluses is to allow producers to become competitive in a free market. Our dairy sector has the potential to attract billions of investments, employ hundreds of thousands, and usher a white revolution. It’s a very low hanging fruit, only if the government can commit to just two measures, adulteration of milk be criminalized as a serious offense AND price controls be abolished. Otherwise, the present decay will continue and an undernourished, protein-deficient nation’s fate is not difficult to predict.