The Hindu Business Line : A community effort

"In India the most important value is giving your word and that's how we have built a reliable partnership with the community." _ Martial G. Rolland, Chairman and Managing Director, Nestle India

Martial G. Rolland, Chairman and Managing Director, Nestl‚ India Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chief Executive Officer, Nestl‚ S.A. (second from right) with students.

Coffee, chocolates, instant noodles, sauces and beverages may be Nestle India's forte, but when it comes to social responsibility, it is its dairy business that shows the way.

Collecting milk from the communities living around its factories for its milk and milk-based products has been Nestle's strategy from 1961. And since then it has systematically expanded its activity, together with infusing into the community other dimensions that would help improve the quality of life.

The company started with collecting 511 kg of milk from around 180 farmers in Moga, Punjab. Today, the network has expanded to 85,000 farmers. As a policy, and as far as possible, the company has been using local raw materials for its products and has been consciously developing local resources.

A training programme run by Nestl‚ India for the village women.

Besides establishing milk collection centres with farm cooling tanks to preserve quality, Nestle has set up a system of direct contact with the farmers — Nestlé Agricultural Services (NAS). The company's own veterinarians and agronomists provide free service to the farmers, and supervise the milk routes. They advise farmers on various issues including proper feed for the animals, artificial insemination for the cattle, with medicines being provided for them at wholesale cost. Subsidies and help in procuring loans are also given. Besides this, milking machines are provided to farmers maintaining large dairy farms, and techniques to enhance milk yields are introduced. NAS is a leaf the company has taken from its Swiss parent and has leveraged the experience gained by Nestlé across the world. "The key success factor of NAS has been that through providing consulting services to the farmers and quality semen at cost price, we have been able to standardise the milk quality," says Nestle India Chairman and Managing Director Martial G. Rolland as he explains that the company has been advising farmers to shift to cow milk instead of buffalo as it makes for higher yield and has progressively been able to bring the cow milk-buffalo milk ratio to 50: 50, while the pan India figure stands at 40:60.

To take the CSR project forward, Nestle has focussed on improving the drinking water, education and sanitation facilities for the community. To provide clean drinking water it has completed as many as 74 projects, mostly in schools, having an impact on 27,000 children directly. To encourage children to go to school, Nestlé India employees have conceptualised a special play `Let Us Go to School', which is staged amongst the communities around its factories and its recordings are screened at smaller gatherings along the milk routes. The company also supports local schools, helps maintain green belts, and conducts health awareness camps.

Women are another target population for the company. Aware that they play a key role in looking after the farm animals and need to adopt good dairying practices, Nestle says it has covered over 19,000 women in 375 villages through special programmes it conducts.

What Rolland is most proud of is that even during the insurgency years in Punjab, the farming community did not ditch the company. " We too have stuck by them through thick and thin. In India the most important value is giving your word and that's how we have built a reliable partnership with the community," he says.

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