The growing demand for milk and butter in urban areas is giving pastoralist families a new source of income during both dry and rainy seasons.
Pastoralist families, who account for roughly half the Somali population, used to depend on selling or slaughtering their livestock.
But the dairy business is now changing livelihoods.
Nor Mohamed Farah, an agro-pastoralist in Nugal valley, said the milk trade was a relatively new phenomenon that was bringing new sources of cash to nomadic communities.
“I now pay my family bills such as food and medical needs as well as the children’s school fees by just taking milk to the town and selling it,” Farah told Radio Ergo’s local reporter in Garowe.
He said most pastoralist families were now selling the milk they produced in the towns, instead of consuming it all themselves as they did previously.
As the pastoralists have a monopoly on the milk market, they increase the price of the reduced amounts of milk they have for sale during the dry season. It is in this season that they experience severe food and water shortages due to drought.
Nadifo Abdullahi Haji Mohamed, a pastoralist who now lives inGarowe, the regional capital of Nugal, said the monopoly helped them to get enough money to buy food, water and other necessary items for themselves and their livestock in order to survive the drought.
One litre of milk rose to two dollars or more in urban areas during the dry season. Prices fall again in the rainy season as milk production increases.
Butter has also become a lucrative product, especially during the dry season when livestock sales are at their lowest. Mohamed said she sells over 50 litresof milk a day, but also stores a quantity of the milk she purchases from the herders to make butter.
“Butter has a big market in town as it will be used as an ingredient in food and for cooking oil,” she said.
Radio Ergo’s local reporter said many pastoralist families were saved from hunger and destitution, and many others might have been displaced to towns, by their ability to earn some cash from milk sales during the recent drought.
