KOTA KINABALU, Dec 15 — The Sabah government will collaborate with Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) to study, plan and develop a dairy valley in Keningau.
In a bilateral discussion with the university on Thursday, Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan proposed that the facility be built in Tambunan.
“Currently, Tambunan’s grazing reserve land is a total of 22,500 acres (9,150ha) not including Bingkor and Liawan within the Keningau municipality,” he said in a statement, here, yesterday.
Jeffrey who is also Sabah Agriculture and Food Industry Minister, said the dairy valley would be supported by several satellite farms to be developed on grazing reserve land nearby.
However, the meeting, which was the first between the Sabah government and UPM, did not set any deadline on when the report of the study would be completed for evaluation.
Jeffrey said the dairy valley project in Sabah, one of five dairy valleys under the National Dairy Industry Development Programme, aimed to ensure self-sufficiency in domestic fresh milk production by 2025.
He said UPM had the technical expertise in developing the dairy valley through its Dairy Centre of Excellence.
“The university also runs a successful dairy farm and has recently collaborated with Farm Fresh Sdn Bhd to strengthen the domestic dairy production capacity through the UPM-Farm Fresh Dairy Farming Industry Centre of Excellence (ICoE),” he added.
— Bernama
