ECONOMICEFFICIENCY OF URBAN DAIRY FARMING IN WOLISO TOWN; OROMIA, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The aim of the study was to measure the level of technical, allocative and economic efficiency of urban dairy farming and to identify factors affecting them in the study area. The study was conducted using Cross-sectional data on socio-economic factors and milk production collected from the 184urban dairy farmers sampled in 2015, using semi-structured questionnaires. The study used the Stochastic Frontier model to analyze the technical, Allocative and economic efficiency of milk production, while Tobit model was used to assess the factors associated with economic efficiency. The results indicated that the farmers had a mean of 84.8% in technical efficiency, 78.1% in Allocative efficiency and 66.3% in economic efficiency. The results showed that the economic inefficiency among the farmers is mostly caused by low Allocative efficiency since the farmers indicated high levels of technical efficiency. From the findings, there were considerable production inefficiencies and thus there was room for increasing productivity through the use of available inputs and reducing costs. Farmers having utilization of the available resources would yield a proportionate increase in the milk output. Increasing herd sizes, feeding animals with enough concentrates and ensuring the animals’ health care costs are met were found to be some of the solutions to the low milk productivity in urban dairy farming. The cost of concentrates and other feeds was found to be the major component of the total cost of dairy production. However, the Allocative efficiency level among the farmers was quite high, an indication that the farmers in the study area, though resource-poor, were efficient at minimizing costs. The study indicated that household size, having dairy farming as the main source of income, access to credit, hired labour, cost of fodder and concentrates were the significant factors associated with economic efficiency in urban dairy farmers in woliso. Price subsidies on dairy inputs, especially fodder and concentrate, as well as better milk prices, are some of the interventions that will see an increase in efficiency resulting in an increase in milk productivity.Policy makers should focus on increasing supply of fodder and control price of fodder and concentrates to increase milk yield further. Providing training to dairy farmers is important to increase efficiency by increasing management skills of the dairy farmers. The management skill development of dairy farmers needs to focus on feeding and cattle husbandry.