The overall objective of the Project was to contribute to the development of a sustainable and profitable milk production and dairy industry. The overall objective also implied, in a wider rural development context, that the project would have impact on the future development of dairy farms (or farm with clear dairy characteristics) for South Serbia.
The specific project objectives that would contribute to fulfilling the overall objective were: Improved quality and increased quantity of raw milk production; Improved farm management; Co-operation among farmers concerning milk-related issues including formation of producer organisations (cooperatives) able to negotiate prices and related issues with the dairy industry; A well-functioning linkage between milk producers and dairy industry; and Farmers' access to and use of advisory services.
It was expected that the project would contribute to a number of issues crucial to the development of the milk and dairy development and which would integrate both - milk production as well as dairy processing:
- Milk production is a first step in the dairy chain approach: raw milk production - collection - dairy processing - dairy marketing. The development of farms producing milk, which was the focus of this project, contributes to the reorganisation process of the dairy sector in South Serbia.
- The strengthening of the South Serbian dairy sector enables the dairy industry to meet the competition from both domestic as well foreign competitors operating on the Serbian market.
- The dairy industry were encouraged to formulate the need for support in terms of dairy technology and dairy marketing. As part of the inception phase, the project were able to assess this need and show its readiness to support.
In the framework of project implementation, the project facilitated and contributed in establishing support mechanisms (including service providers), which enables the milk and dairy sector to develop independently from the project, after project implementation. An output of the project, which is crucial for sustainability of the milk and dairy sector, was the strengthening of the extension and advisory services. Especially, farmers depend on independent and relevant information for their farm development.
The project's beneficiaries were the individuals, groups, institutions that was be directly or indirectly influenced by the project. The direct beneficiaries were farmer families (both men, women and youth) with milk production in Southern Serbia; dairies and dairy workers; existing advisory staff and experts; pilot farm families and existing formal or informal organisations within villages in the project area. The indirect beneficiaries were consumers and the rural population in Southern Serbia; distributors of milk products and local companies delivering services and equipment to the farm- and dairy sectors.
