India’s dairy cooperative movement and the country’s defence establishment on Tuesday reaffirmed a four-decade-old supply partnership that officials say has become a model for linking rural livelihoods with national security logistics.
Speaking at the “Cooperative Conclave on Dairy-Defence Partnership” held in Anand, Gujarat, Dr Meenesh Shah, Chairman of the National Cooperative Dairy Federation of India Ltd (NCDFI) and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), said the arrangement delivers gains across the value chain — dependable, resilient supply lines for defence establishments, assured institutional markets for cooperatives, and steadier incomes for dairy farmers who gain access to wider markets.
Shah singled out the role cooperatives have played in strengthening milk procurement, processing, cold storage and supply-chain infrastructure in border and North-Eastern regions, noting that every additional litre supplied draws farmers and soldiers closer together. The conclave formally recognised cooperatives supplying milk and milk products to defence establishments in remote, border and high-altitude terrain.
Army Seeks Deeper Local Sourcing
Lt Gen Mukesh Chadha, Director General of Supplies and Transport (DGST) at the Indian Army, credited NCDFI and its member cooperatives for maintaining reliable supplies to troops stationed in difficult terrain, while praising NDDB’s efforts to organise and strengthen dairy cooperatives in frontier areas to support local milk production.
Chadha argued that a stronger cooperative presence along the border could do more than feed troops — it could create sustainable local markets, generate employment, and even help stem migration away from these regions. He called for closer coordination between the Army and NCDFI to assess future requirements and build local processing and storage capacity, while also flagging the continued operational need for long-life milk stocks in certain locations.
The conclave, which drew Maj Gen S Sooraj, Additional Director General Supplies and Transport, senior Army officers, and managing directors of dairy cooperatives from border and North-Eastern states, also covered supply arrangements with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Assam Rifles — the latter having signed a fresh Memorandum of Agreement with NCDFI earlier this year to expand milk and dairy-product supplies across the North-Eastern states.
Shift From UHT to Fresh Milk
A key theme of the conclave was the gradual shift toward fresh milk over ultra-high temperature (UHT) processed milk, wherever local procurement, processing, cold-chain and logistical conditions allow. UHT milk supplies currently stand at 4.11 crore litres annually and will continue to serve locations where long shelf-life remains operationally essential, but officials signalled intent to expand the fresh-milk footprint further.
Participants committed to improving demand visibility, mapping product-wise capacities across cooperatives, strengthening alternate supply arrangements, enabling digital coordination between units and dairies, diversifying the product basket, and building more sustainable logistics networks.
Four Decades, Rs 1,627 Crore
NCDFI’s institutional relationship with the Ministry of Defence dates back to 1984. It has since grown to encompass 117 dairy cooperatives, with contracts worth Rs 1,627 crore in 2025–26 alone. Fresh milk supplies rose to 18.48 crore litres during the year, while combined fresh and UHT supplies touched 22.60 crore litres. Ten dairy cooperatives from border and North-Eastern states alone supplied 6.44 crore litres of fresh milk to 196 Army units in 2025–26.
The partnership has expanded beyond the Army in recent months. Under a new framework agreed with Assam Rifles, regional cooperatives — including Amul, Nandini and Warana, alongside milk unions in Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura — are scaling up deliveries beyond basic fresh and UHT milk to include value-added products such as processed cheese, in an arrangement projected to generate roughly Rs 44 crore annually for participating cooperatives.
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