Review on Challenges and Opportunities of Milk Production in Ethiopia

Neamn Gebreselassie

doi:10.7176/fsqm/95-04

Abstract

This review is conducted to assess the Opportunities and Challenges of Milk production in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia the dairy industry plays an enormous role in ensuring food security and creating rural employment in the highland and lowland areas. In Ethiopia, dairying is experienced throughout the country by a large number of rural and urban producers. Indigenous breeds of cows are generally considered as low milk producers. However, they are the major source of milk in Ethiopia that accounts for 97% of the total milk production in the country. The average milk production from indigenous cows is 1.85 litters/head per day and ranged from 1.24litter in the rural lowland areas to 2.31 liter in the rural highland areas. There are ample opportunities for dairy development which includes large state of range land, huge livestock population, diverse cattle genetic resources, existence of different agro-ecologies suitable for milk production, rapid increase human population and urbanization. Despite of the opportunities existed for dairy development in the country there are also technical and non technical constraints which hinders the dairy development so far in the country. These constraints include inadequate feed and water, poor health service, poor housing system unplanned breeding system, inadequate extension service, poor genetic resource, fragile linkages between extension service providers and milk producers as well as inadequate infrastructure are some of the problems for dairy production in Ethiopia. Hence besides the opportunities existed there should be also strong institutional support for dairy producers and cooperatives, and improving access to services like credit facilities, road and market infrastructure, land, water, feed, health, extensive AI service etc must receive appropriate awareness in order to advance milk production in the country. Keywords: Challenge, Ethiopia, Milk, Opportunity DOI: 10.7176/FSQM/95-04 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

Highlights

Ethiopia stands first in Africa by its livestock population with 53.99 million cattle, out of which female cattle constitutes about 55.48% and 44.52% are males. 98.95% of the total cattle are local breeds and the remaining are hybrid (0.94%) and exotic breeds (0.11%) (CSA, 2013)
The most important constraints associated with milk production as ranked according to their importance by the farmers were feed shortage, shortage of water, access to land, disease prevalence, poor genetic potential of local cows for milk production, inadequate artificial insemination services, and shortage of farm labor
This paper is aiming at reviewing the opportunities and challenges faced for Milk production in Ethiopia

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Ethiopia stands first in Africa by its livestock population with 53.99 million cattle, out of which female cattle constitutes about 55.48% and 44.52% are males. 98.95% of the total cattle are local breeds and the remaining are hybrid (0.94%) and exotic breeds (0.11%) (CSA, 2013). 98.95% of the total cattle are local breeds and the remaining are hybrid (0.94%) and exotic breeds (0.11%) (CSA, 2013). Ethiopia holds large potential for dairy development. In Ethiopia dairy production depends mainly on indigenous livestock genetic resources; on cattle and goats, camels and sheep. Cattle has the largest contribution (81.2%) of the total national annual milk output, followed by goats (7.9%) camels (6.3%) and sheep (4.6%) (CSA, 2009). Milk and milk products contributed 36-46% to the total house hold income in some area (Asrat etal, 2013). The large and diverse livestock genetic resources, existence of diverse agro-ecologies suitable for dairy production, increasing domestic demand for milk and milk products, large livestock population, increasing human population, urbanization trends and rising household incomes indicate the potential and opportunities to increase milk production in Ethiopia (Azage etal., 2013).

Milk Production performance

Findings

CONCLUSSION