Two cows at the start, 1,500 litres of milk a day now

In 1994 this farmer at Rahmannagar inside Bogura town gave up contracting work, bought two cows for 1.5 lakh taka and started a dairy. The first 15 to 20 litres a day had no buyers, so every afternoon he hired a rickshaw, carried the milk round the neighbourhoods in a bucket and sold it himself. Thirty-two years on, the farm sits on 48 shotok of land with 215 cattle - 170 milking cows and 45 heifers - worth over 4 crore taka, producing about 1,500 litres a day. He no longer looks for buyers: customers queue at the gate in three shifts, at 8 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon and 8 at night, and many are turned away empty-handed. Milk goes at 80 taka a litre, up from 70 a month earlier, against a production cost of over 75 taka a litre, 80 percent of which is feed. Demand at the gate runs 6,000 to 7,500 litres a day against his 1,500, so buyers are limited to one or two litres each. The farm sells over 1 lakh taka of milk a day and over 4 crore taka a year, with 11 regular employees and about 20 people working directly and indirectly.