Sheep Production System, Marketing and Constraints in Ethiopia

Abstract

This study reviews the sheep production and marketing systems with the aim of delivering summarized and synthesized information for the beneficiaries and users. In Ethiopia, more than 80% of the human population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods and usually keep livestock as pastoralists or in mixed crop livestock systems. Sheep production is one of the main enterprises in mixed-crop livestock system in Ethiopia. Sheep production provides food, cash income and manure to the smallholder farmers. Sheep have greater environmental adaptability, shorter production cycles and faster growth rates, ease of management, low investment capital and low feed requirements as compared to large ruminants. In Ethiopia, sheep production is of subsistence nature with little or no market orientation. Efficient marketing system enhances the commercialization of the smallholder system and it also increases animal productivity and income of the producers. Sheep productions are highly influenced by feed shortage, disease and parasites, severe water shortage and high shortage of labor. There are opportunities to increase sheep production like several development partners involved in higher learning; research and development are currently committed to sheep development. Depending on this review     farmers should improve management systems and use healthy control mechanisms, marketing system should be modernized which means use body weight scale to sell and buy sheep, it is important to increase and use different opportunities that improve sheep production, and extension service should give training to farmers how to improve sheep production performance by giving supplementary feed and vaccination for different diseases.