The Daldale Milk Development Cooperative on Tuesday dumped the milk collected from farmers as dairy companies have stopped processing and distributing milk with Covid-19 fears keeping everybody indoors.

Big dairy factories in Kathmandu have shut down operations, and there was nothing the cooperative could do with the milk it had collected from its members.

The cooperative's regular buyers—Himalayan Dairy, Dairy Development Corporation of Kathmandu and Fishtail Dairy of Pokhara—have not been picking up milk for the past week.

The dairy companies said sales had totally dried up due to the lockdown and did not come to take the milk.

Bishnu Poudel, vice-chairman of the cooperative, said the dairies refused to collect the milk even though they told the companies that they had already bought it from farmers.

“There is little milk consumption in the village, so we had to throw it away,” he said. According to him, the dairy companies pay Rs60 per litre and buy the milk regularly.

There are 52 dairies in eastern Nawalparasi which sell 65,000 litres of milk daily. Farmers said that if arrangements could be made to sell their milk to the powdered milk factory in Thimura, Chitwan, their product would not go to waste.

The factory recently closed after not being able to compete with imported milk powder from India.