A simple, innovative app could become a game-changer for Kazakhstan’s dairy industry – improving the efficiency of the raw milk supply chain.

FAO and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have trained milk procurement managers with Kazakhstan’s top dairy companies on Collect Mobile – an open source application for data collection, management, analysis and display that is part of the Open Foris suite.

Once downloaded to an Android smartphone or tablet, a customized version of the Collect Mobile app can be used by dairy companies to map milk procurement routes, monitor and score the performance of their milk suppliers, and pinpoint trouble spots hindering milk quality and yields.

“In this project, we set the ambitious goal of boosting Kazakhstan’s raw milk supply, which is a major bottleneck in the development of the country’s dairy industry,” said FAO agribusiness specialist Inna Punda, referring to the FAO-EBRD project to support a more inclusive dairy value chain.

“Mobile phones and information technology are now part of our lives,” she added. “This is about finding a simple IT solution for a complex problem.” Read on here.