Dairy Production and Marketing Systems of Smallholder Farmers: The Case of Urban and Pre-urban of Guto Gida and Bako Tibe Districts, Western Oromia, Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopian’s economy is still dominated by agriculture and livestock share about 13-16% of total GDP. Dairy production could play a great role in the economy, considering its strong potential to provide regular income to poor rural, per-urban and urban households in Ethiopia. The objectives of the study are: to characteristics dairy production and marketing, to assess milk production and marketing system of dairy producers and to identify milk production and marketing constraints in dairy production in the study areas. Both purposive and random sampling techniques were employed to draw appropriate sample households. Data was obtained through household survey using a semi structured questionnaire. The result showed that dairy is the most important household livelihood in the study areas and out of the total dairy, about 72.97% are Horro breed. The overall average of local and cross dairy milk is 2.33 and 7.88 litter per day, respectively. The major constraints are livestock disease, feed shortage, labor shortage and low milk yield. These findings demonstrate the vital need to strengthen dairy production and market information delivery systems, encourage improved forage crop, improved breeding system and establish more market outlets with improved market facilities in order to promote production dairy in high value by smallholder farmers.

Keywords: Dairy production, Ethiopia, marketing, system, pre-urban, smallholder, urban