Honduras 2018

Dairy Hub project in Honduras to fight poverty and malnutrition

Tetra Laval Food for Development and Tetra Pak Central America & Caribbean have implemented a Dairy Hub project together with a local customer, Lacthosa. The customer has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government to revitalise the dairy sector by providing technical assistance and technology transfer to smallholder farmers. So far,100 smallholder farms have been trained with knowledge provided by Tetra Laval Food for Development. The project will grow with another 200 farms in 2018. The objectives are to increase milk quality, quantity and profitability for the farmers.

Food security and malnutrition are serious challenges in Honduras. According to the World Food Programme, the poverty rate is 68 per cent and one in four children suffers from chronic malnutrition. Agriculture is the most important economic sector but only about 35 per cent of the annual milk production is industrially processed. In addition, the average milk yield is only 3.4 litres a day per cow.

Tetra Laval Food for Development has supported Lacthosa with initial farm assessment and training. The project is now covering 1,013 farms with the objective of increasing coverage to 1,240. Lacthosa will collect the smallholder farmers’ milk and provide them access to the market. Lacthosa’s staff are being trained with the latest best practices on feed and animal nutrition, milk hygiene, animal health and eproduction by the Tetra Laval Food for Development specialists.

“We are very happy about the joint work we have been developing in the Dairy Hub project together with Tetra Laval Food for Development and Tetra Pak. This has contributed greatly to the strengthening of our relations with our milk suppliers,” says Christopher Millensted, Head of Supplier Development of Lacthosa. The dairy development initiative also aims to benefit child nutrition in the future by focusing efforts on re-launching the school milk programme.​​

Dairy farmers in Honduras