The Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation or Milma was registered as a cooperative society in 1980 with its head office in Thiruvananthapuram. It was brought under the Operation Flood programme of the National Dairy Development Board. KCMMF is a Federation of Regional three Regional Milk Unions, the ERCMPU, TRCMPU and MRCMPU. It follows a cooperative structure and one of the most profitable cooperatives in Kerala State. In 1983, it took over the production and milk marketing facilities under the Kerala Livestock and Milk Marketing Board. The board was later named to Kerala Livestock Development Board. In the early 1980s, Kerala was seen as a dairy unfriendly State and had to depend primarily on the neighboring States for its milk supply. However, today, Kerala is almost self-sufficient in milk production. The credit for this largely goes to Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation and its three Regional Cooperative Milk Producers Unions, for the creation of a procurement and marketing network, introduction of quality products, customer friendly policies, modern management and most important of all the integrated cooperative participation by the farmers. The Statewide network of Dairy cooperatives now operating is doing yeoman service by assuring a steady market and stable price to dairy farmers for the milk produced by them. Every success story has a humble beginning and so has been with the Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, popularly known as Milma. Established in 1980 as the implementing agency for Operation Flood II in the State of Kerala, Milma has as a vision of "Farmers Prosperity through Consumer Satisfaction" and aims at socio-economic progress of the dairy farmer through procuring, processing and marketing of milk. The KCMMF operates on the truly democratic lines of "of the farmer, by the farmer and for the farmer". The Organisation has a three-tier structure with the primary milk Cooperative societies at the village level, Regional Milk Producers’ Unions at the middle level and an apex body at the State level which is the Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. There are three Regional Cooperative Milk Producers’ Unions operating at present. The revenue districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta come under the jurisdiction of the Thiruvananthapuram Regional Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union, the districts of Ernakulam, Thrissur, Kottayam and Idukki under the Ernakulam Regional Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union and the six northern districts of Palakkad, Kannur, Malappuram, Kozhikkode, Wayanad and Kasaragod under the Malabar Regional Cooperative Milk Producers Union. The three-tier structure ensures that the farmer members are directly responsible for policy level decisions for the marketing of their produce. The farmer memberships which stood at 45,000 during takeover of dairies from the erstwhile Kerala Livestock Development & Milk Marketing Board during 1983 has grown to over 9.0 lakhs through 3,600 milk Cooperatives by the end of 2017-'18. Similarly, milk procurement has also shown a phenomenal growth from 52,000 litres per day during 1983 to over 12,25,000 litres per day in 2017-'18. The success of the marketing network and customer acceptance has been proved by the growth in sales from 55,000 litres per day during 1983 to 13,00,000 litres per day by the end of 2017-'18. Figures from the 2017-18 Annual Report. Keeping pace with development of milk procurement and sale, Milma has concentrated on infrastructural development with financial assistance from the National Dairy Development Board, Swiss Development Cooperation and other agencies. As on date, there are 13 milk processing plants with a combined processing capacity of 12.50 lakh litres per day with further expansion envisaged and 8 Milk Chilling Plants scattered across the State. A Milk Powder Plant having a capacity for production of 10 MT of milk powder per day and two cattle feed plants, one at Pattanakkad and other at Malampuzha. The Pellet cattle feed manufactured in these plants are well accepted by the Dairy farmers and in the open market. The Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, in its 34th year of operation, has been one of the successfully run cooperatives in Kerala state. The peoples' strength has been seen time and again in the functioning of our organisation and this has helped us to grow as this was run by the dairy farmers for the dairy farmers. Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation is a testimony to the success of cooperative development in the hands of the people themselves.
