16 minute read
Mourning Milk Powder
In Sri Lanka, milk powder is not just a commodity—it brings people together for the social ritual of teatime. The country’s current economic crisis has made this everyday ingredient inaccessible.
TEXT Zahara Dawoodbhoy PHOTOGRAPHY Nazly Ahmed
For most of my life, ordering tea at a roadside kade in Sri Lanka has been marked by a customary question: “Do you want tea or plain tea?”
The de-facto tea being referred to here is what most other cultures might call milk tea—a tooth-achingly sweet, creamy drink steeped with the flavour of black tea.
A warm cup of milk tea is a symbol of hospitality in Sri Lanka, and every household will have its own way of preparing the drink, the nuances of which are often held up with a particular sense of pride. My Nani or maternal grandmother’s version, and my own personal favourite, is made by simmering the tea leaves directly in fresh milk, and topping off the brew with a teaspoon of condensed milk.
Tea drinking is so ubiquitous in Sri Lankan life that it has even spilled into the country’s white collar workday. Every corporate office in any city will have three recognised break times—morning tea break, lunch break, and afternoon tea break.
Considering this, it was difficult to comprehend the answer I received when I walked into a resthouse near Puttalam—a town in the North Western Province of the country—recently and asked for a cup of tea.
“No milk tea, sorry,” came the resounding voice from behind the counter. “We have run out of milk powder, and cannot find it anywhere. I can give you plain tea.”
I felt almost insulted. Grudgingly, I acquiesced to a cup of plain black tea.
***
As good as it is, my Nani’s signature recipe is an expensive one, because it features fresh milk. In fact, powdered milk has long been the secret behind the country’s milk tea frenzy. Being an island nation, fresh milk is not easily available. Hence, for decades, a box of concentrated milk powder has been the shortcut to this indulgence.
Milk powder is also widely used as a substitute for breast milk, and was in fact initially marketed as a health drink for infants and children. According to a 2002 Massey University study, which looked at the role of motherhood in creating a market for milk powder in Sri Lanka, “The key to establishing market dominance was gaining the trust of mothers in Anchor products, which are marketed as the best-quality milk products that mothers can buy for their children.” This market strategy proved to be extremely fruitful, as New Zealand—the birthplace of the Anchor brand—is one of the leading countries to supply milk powder to Sri Lanka.
Although many non-governmental organisations and Sri Lankan women’s groups have since discouraged the consumption of milk powder for infants, the product remains an essential part of the diet for Sri Lankan children.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Sri Lanka in early 2020, just as the national economy was beginning to recover from the Easter Sunday bomb attacks that took place one year earlier, resulting lockdowns and border closures served as the trigger that plunged the country into an ongoing economic crisis. With the wide-scale loss of jobs in the wake of the pandemic, and a range of other factors
such as loss of tourism, tax cuts, low reserves of foreign exchange, and financial debt, Sri Lanka is currently in dire economic straits.
The waning tourism industry, which previously contributed more than 10 percent of the country’s GDP, has resulted in a lack of incoming foreign currency and a sharp dip in foreign reserves. As economist Rehana Thowfeek noted in an Al Jazeera article, the situation in the country “... is boiling down to a choice between servicing its debt or paying for imports of everyday needs. So far it appears that the government is committed to the former, even if that means sacrificing the needs of its citizens.”
As a result, uncleared essential items such as milk powder continue to pile up at Colombo’s port even as domestic prices soar. Certain corporations, including Milco Sri Lanka, Pelwatte Dairy Industries Ltd. and Nestlé Lanka produce
A man prepares tea outdoors for protesters who will arrive at GotaGoGama, the main protest site in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where thousands of people have been gathering everyday to demand political change and solutions to the country's economic crisis.
milk powder locally, but even combined, are able to meet only around 40 percent of the country’s demand, and the majority of dairy products are indeed imported.
In 2021 alone, the price of a 400g pack of milk powder increased by Rs 250, a steep hike of 33 percent. In late March 2022, news reports noted that the price of the same 400g packet shot up by Rs 250 in a single day.
Visakam Thiruvadhirai, a tuk tuk driver and father of three who lives in the outskirts of Colombo, noted how many roadside shopkeepers in the area had begun opening up 1 kg packets of milk powder and dividing them into smaller 100g packets.
“People can’t afford a whole packet anymore,” Thiruvadhirai said. “I used to get the big packet for my family, which would last us a few weeks, and now I can only afford to get the small [100g] packets. We have all stopped drinking milk tea and we save all the milk powder for the children.”
In January this year, local news agencies reported that long lines of people were queuing outside shops for a packet of milk powder again, after lines were temporarily dispersed a month earlier due to a police directive ordering citizens not to queue. Some of these lines were forcibly dispersed by police officers as citizens began openly voicing their frustrations with the government, and blaming President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for this shortage.
To quell the chaos during this time, the government issued tokens for available packets, but by January 2022, the
practice was discontinued and lines began to snake outside stores once more.
The quiet irony behind this situation is that the very ingredient from which Sri Lankans are experiencing withdrawal symptoms has played a vital role in creating the conditions that have made its loss so potent.
***
As someone who was born in the mid ‘90s, it is difficult to divorce my childhood memories from milk powder. I don’t remember the first time I drank a glass of diluted powdered milk, because it dates back further than my own memory. But I do remember that by the time I was six years old, I was eating whole teaspoons of plain milk powder, relishing as it dissolved in my mouth to produce a thick, gooey mess that stuck to my teeth, equal parts sweet and salty.
The abundance of milk powder was something that I had never questioned. It was only recently that I learned how unique this was to my generation. “From the mid 1950s to 1977, Sri Lanka had a policy environment that favoured local production and selfsufficiency,” said Dr. Siri Hettige, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Colombo University.
The implications of this centralised, inwardly-oriented economy was that official pricing, rationing and distribution policies were the main instruments through which the government tried to achieve its social objectives. According to a study conducted by the University of Peradeniya in 2019, Sri Lanka was at one point about 80 percent selfsufficient in dairy production, even with a lower availability of irrigated farming systems.
Just one generation before my six-year-old self was devouring large amounts of concentrated milk powder, my mother was waiting outside her house for the milkman. He would come early in the morning before school started to fill four bottles left out on her doorstep with fresh milk. My mother recalls with fondness how her twin brother would gulp down her glass of milk on the days when she
couldn’t finish it. The next morning, empty bottles were left outside for the milkman to refill.
“A lot has changed in what people consume and how they consume it, and the free market economy created a situation where these changes occurred very quickly,” Hettige explained.
The pivotal moment Hettige refers to occurred in late 1977, when authorities initiated comprehensive economic reforms, reversing policies of the previous two decades. Open market policies were adopted in an attempt to boost production, increase employment and improve the standards of living. The decision was fuelled by changes that had been happening gradually. “The population was increasing, and people started moving into urban areas which were densely populated,” Hettige said. “People could not consume things which they consumed in villages, and so the consumption patterns became different, and demand for new products increased.”
Sri Lanka had been suddenly thrust into the 21st century, and my mother’s milkman couldn’t keep up.
As a consequence, milk powder was injected into the country’s economy in 1983, when Nestlé Lanka, a subsidiary of the global giant, commissioned its first plant. This plant initially produced condensed milk, but expanded its operations a few years later with a focus on milk powder.
The company’s venture into Sri Lanka was an effort to outsource production to developing nations in order to cope with economic constraints caused by World War II.
According to a study conducted by the University of Peradeniya in 1992, Nestlé Lanka was initially given permission to collect milk from three districts in the country. The company also embarked on a large development programme to increase milk production in these districts. But by 1992, fuelled by open economic policies, the formal segregation of areas for milk collection was deregulated and Nestlé Lanka was free to collect milk from all districts in Sri Lanka.
“Self-sufficiency dropped [by] half because the consumption of dairy products increased,” economist Thowfeek said. “New products were introduced to markets and demand was not stifled as before, as there was no rationing by the state.”
Milk powder rapidly replaced fresh milk around the country, partly because of the convenience that it introduced into the Sri Lankan household. Milk could now be kept unrefrigerated in the kitchen for months, and families no longer had to spend money on daily deliveries from the milkman. By the 2000s, the country was able to meet only 30 percent of the national requirement. Currently, Sri Lanka spends around $400 million annually on milk powder alone, and the product has woven itself into the country’s national identity.
*** H.M. Shanthirathne Herath wakes up every day before sunrise to feed his six cows. Unlike other dairy farmers in Matale, a town in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, he doesn’t take his cows outside to feed. From years of experience as a dairy farmer, he has found that exposure to the sun decreases the amount of milk the cows produce.
So he goes out every morning to the watte—a patch of overgrown shrubbery and grass—near his home and collects grass to bring back for his cows. Once they are done feeding, he collects milk into a 25-litre plastic vat and waits for a company van to arrive.
“Everything I produce, I give to the company, because it gives me a good rate and so I prioritise that,” Herath said. “Many people from my village come and ask to buy milk from me, but I cannot get the same prices through them, and so I won’t sell it to them. Here in the village, we don’t really drink fresh milk. We use milk powder.” Herath is one of many farmers in Matale employed by Richlife Dairies Ltd., a dairy company in Sri Lanka. The company is well-known in the area and respected by farmers for the relatively higher rates it offers. At times, the company also intervenes to help farmers with loan schemes that enable them to grow their enterprise and produce more yield.
But when asked about business growth, many dairy farmers in the Matale area have a similar answer.
“Maybe by cultivating other products, like spices.”
The idea of growth in dairy farming is never brought up as a viable option.
“It is very difficult to grow the milk industry in Sri Lanka, even though doing so will greatly help deal with crises like what we are experiencing today,” said Mangala Kotalawela, manager of milk procurement for Richlife. “Real growth involves making a shift toward self-sufficiency, and taking on something ambitious like India did.”
***
Despite similarities in culture and history, the story of India’s dairy economy diverges greatly from Sri Lanka’s. Like Sri Lanka, India was left without a blueprint for economic improvement following their independence from the British in 1947. In the decades that followed, the country struggled to meet the demands of a growing population.
In response to this, India’s National Dairy Development Board launched an ambitious project in the early 1970s known as Operation Flood, which transformed the nation from a milk-deficient nation into one of the world’s largest milk producers.
The initiative was based on an experimental pattern that created a national milk grid, linking producers throughout India with consumers in over 700 towns and cities, reducing seasonal and regional price variations and ensuring that milk producers got a major share of the income generated from consumers.
Harish Damodaran, rural affairs and agriculture editor for The Indian Express and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, told me that milk has “very high income elasticity of demand” in India. That is, when the incomes of people increase, so does their consumption of milk.
“One cannot imagine what India’s imports of milk powder and butter would have been if we did not have the White Revolution,” he said.“It has helped [the country] keep up with both its increase in population and incomes.”
The White Revolution was widely hailed as a success, and it is from this transformation that the iconic brand and cooperative Amul emerged. The company’s three tier structure effectively cut out middle men, allowing dairy farmers to profit more from milk sales.
In 1997, Dr. Verghese Kurien, credited as the man responsible for India’s self-sufficiency in milk, visited Sri Lanka, determined to replicate his model and reduce the island’s dependence on high cost, imported milk powder.
But Kurien’s efforts failed, due to the exertions from a strong import lobby, as well as cultural, social and economic conditions in Sri Lanka. For one, the dairy culture in both countries were starkly different. There are entire castes in India that specialise in cattle rearing and dairy farming, and fresh milk and milk products are consumed far more widely due to the country’s relatively low consumption of meat.
“Milk is the only source of animal protein and fat for the vast population of the country that is vegetarian,” Damodaran said. “So this made the White Revolution essential for India.”
This is not the case in Sri Lanka, which has a much higher consumption of meat compared to India. Besides, milk products like cheese are not an essential part of the country’s diet.
“In that way, powdered milk was the perfect product for Sri Lankan culture, where the majority of milk consumption comes from tea,” Hettige said. “It is convenient, quick and has a long shelf life, and can be kept without the need for a refrigerator, which many households don’t have.”
There is also a shortage in arable and grazing land in Sri Lanka, and agriculture itself is on the decline. Coupled with a shortage of expertise in animal husbandry, it is perhaps not surprising that Kurien’s ideas never bore fruit in Sri Lanka.
While many see Sri Lanka’s inability to follow the Indian dairy model as a failure, others—like Thowfeek—believe that Sri Lanka should handle its economic issues differently.
“Personally, I do not think we need to be self-sufficient in everything we consume,” she shared via email. “We must be careful in the pursuit of self-sufficiency because we
should only be doing so if it is comparatively more costefficient.”
Thowfeek believes that Sri Lanka can improve production capabilities in several industries by liberalising the country further, and fostering free markets, competition, innovation and knowledge transfers.
“As for addressing current shortages, these are [stemming from] ill-informed policy decisions which need to be addressed immediately, which, in my opinion, is a completely different discussion to whether or not we ought to be self-sufficient,” Thowfeek said.
***
After thanking Herath for inviting me into his home, showing me his cows, and speaking so openly with me about his trade, I headed out to the road where my car was parked. But I was stopped in my tracks by Herath’s wife, Nalini.
“Don’t leave yet,” she said, panting from trying to catch up with me. “You must stay for tea!”
Even though I was still recovering from a stomach ache, I could not bring myself to break the cardinal rule of Sri Lankan hospitality—never refuse someone who invites you home for tea. I also knew that any attempt I made to refuse would lead to stronger insistence, so I sheepishly walked back into the house and sat down.
“Since you’re here to ask about my cows, how about a glass of fresh milk,” Herath beamed, as he shouted to Nalini from the kitchen, instructing her to heat up the milk.
My excitement at the novelty of what I was being offered quietened my anxieties about my stomach, and I happily enjoyed two cups of warm, sweet milk, collected straight from the cows only hours earlier. Herath and I chatted about the differences between country and city life, and I left his house feeling full of conversation, perspective and fresh milk.
For Herath, my visit was a rare occasion to indulge in the fruits of his own labour.
Conversations on food shortages are always framed from the perspective of survival, and rightly so. But leaving Herath’s house that morning, I realised that what has made the shortage of milk powder in Sri Lanka so visceral is that it has deprived us of a way of coming together. It gave me a newfound understanding as to why people wake up before the sun rises to wait in line for a packet of milk powder.
“There is something about tea drinking that feels so essential here,” I remember a friend of mine telling me— over a cup of tea, of course.
“I didn’t grow up in a family that was particularly close to each other, but we all had this one thing, this one time, where we all came together and talked. Of course, the conversations we had were always trivial and never too revealing, but at least we were talking to each other.”
It is unclear if Sri Lanka will ever see the end of this economic crisis, and opinions on what the country should do next vary greatly. But as I think back to the countless cups of tea I have shared with friends, colleagues and strangers over the years, Herath’s parting words to me feel especially weighty.
“You must come visit me again and show me your article,” he said, chuckling. “I am curious about what you will say about our profession and the shortage. In a few years, all the milk powder will be gone from our country, and then I won’t ever see you again.”
