Head of the Presidential Task Force for Economic Revival and Poverty Alleviation, Basil Rajapaksa made an observation tour of the Watawala Dairy Farm in Lonach Estate, Ginigathena recently.
The state-of-the-art dairy farm by Watawala Dairy Limited (WDL), a 100% subsidiary of Watawala Plantations, today manages a herd of 1, 600 dairy cattle with an ultramodern milking parlour which can produce over six million litres of fresh milk annually (17,000 litres of fresh milk per day). Sunshine Holdings Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy, Watawala Plantations Chief Executive Officer Binesh Pananwala and a few other officials of WDL accompanied Rajapaksa during his visit.
Rajapakse praised the company for allocating small areas of land to families to cultivate land and supply the farm with maize, grass and other input materials, as an additional source of income. The farm, with the help of advanced technology, processes the cattle feed by wholly using the corn of maize.
He said that this initiative has helped to increase the income level of farmers who provide maize to the farm. He also suggested evaluating new revenue streams to develop sustainable agribusiness practices, including the production of biogases and carbonic fertiliser using cow dung. Stringent hygienic farm management controls have been implemented within the farm, conforming to international standards, including adequate supplies of clean water, slurry operation and effluent management system, a spokesman for the farm said.
WDL also has a fully computerised, automated, state-of-the-art milking parlour system.