The government of Japan has requested the closure of elementary and junior high schools nationwide from March 2 until spring break in order to combat the new coronavirus infection. As a result, dairy farmers and milk makers are faced with the problem of surplus milk that would have been used as milk for school meals. Many co-ops nationwide are working to promote the sale of the milks to help the affected dairy farmers and makers. Here, we introduce the example of Co-op Ehime, one of the co-ops that are engaged in such activities.

In Ehime Prefecture, where Ehime Co-op operates its business, the public elementary and junior high schools have temporarily been closed from March 4 until the end of spring vacation. As a result, the supply of milk for school meals has been suspended.

Generally, Ehime Prefectural office buys raw milk from the prefecture's dairy farms of about 100 household farmers and produces about 120,000 packs of school milk in 200 ml paper packs every weekday. Those milks are supplied to all public elementary and junior high schools in the prefecture.

A total of about 400 tons of milk would have been supplied to schools in the prefecture from March 4 to 25, but could not be done due to the closure of schools. The alternative choice for suspension of supply of school milk was to turn the milk into raw materials for processing powdered skim milk, butter and others. However, compared to school milk, selling milk as raw material is cheaper and could cause a significant effect on the financial management of the dairy farmers. Therefore in Japan there is a call for increasing milk consumption.