In rural areas, milk may be processed fresh or sour. The choice depends on available equipment, product demand and on the quantities of milk available for processing. In Africa, smallholder milk-processing systems use mostly sour milk. Allowing milk to ferment prior to processing has a number of advantages and processing sour milk will continue to be important in this sector.
Where greater volumes of milk can be assembled, processing fresh milk gives more product options, allows greater throughput of milk and, in some instances, greater recovery of milk solids in product.
Because of differences between processing systems, each will be dealt with separately. The section on fresh-milk technology deals with techniques used for processing fresh milk in batches of up to 500 litres. Sour-milk technology is used for processing batches of up to 15 litres of accumulated sour milk. This will be described in the section on sour-milk technology.
Fresh Milk Technology
This section describes the manufacture of skim milk, cream, butter, butter oil, ghee, boiled-curd and pickled cheese varieties and fermented milks from fresh milk. The processing scale envisaged is 100 to 200 litres of milk per day. However, the processes described are suitable for batches of up to 500 litres per day. Most of the equipment described can be fabricated locally. Equipment not available locally, such as a milk separator, has a cost advantage and quickly gives a good financial return in terms of increased efficiency. Hand-operated milk separators are durable and have a long life when properly maintained. Importation of such equipment is, therefore, advantageous.
The procedures given here are very precise. In many rural dairy processing plants, however, monitoring equipment may not be available and, although yields may be maximised by adhering to the prescribed procedures, all these products can be