Tatiana Antonenko, International Dairy Magazine

The development of cooperative movement in the dairy industry in Ukraine began many years ago. Let us recall the Galician Regional Economic-Dairy Union, later known throughout Europe as «Maslosouz». It was, one might say, a successful economic project of West-Ukrainian cooperation of the first half of the twentieth century.
Butter produced in Galicia, was exported to Germany, England, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Czech Republic, as well as in Australia and Palestine. The label of co-op was four-leaf clover and the letters MS - symbols of «Maslosoyuz». Moreover, the butter was produced exclusively from the milk of cows that were kept in the private sector. Milk was delivered to the processing plants on carts with ice blocks, and then these same carts transported manufactured and packed in barrels butter to the city of Lviv. Butter was loved in Europe and in Ukraine, and the facts of the history of the «Maslosoyuz» are now stored in the Museum of the History of cooperation in Lviv Cooperative College.

The first dairy co-op already mentioned was organized in 1904. It took more than a hundred years, and again in the country talks about bringing people together in cooperatives and to civilize those 80% of milk production, which come from the private owners of the cows.

Some specialists believe that efforts should be directed exclusively to the development of large commodity farms, and about some interaction with private households (PH) do not want to hear. Supporters of this policy stress that the production of milk is a business, and therefore must play by the rules of business. And PH are not players, but the object of social assistance. Another part of the concerned public nevertheless draws attention to the fact that when to talk about milk from PH, the case is not only in the milk. This is a question of survival of many rural families. While there are discussions, the government regularly issues are numerous and, alas, are purely declarative livestock development programs, they are changing the rules of the game so quickly that people rarely have time to read .

Read more information in the magazine «Milk and Farm» № 3 (10), June 2012