Factors Affecting Volume of Milk Procurement: The Case of Dairy Cooperative in Aysaita Wereda, Afar Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was conducted in Aysaita wereda, Awusa Zone of Afar regional state to  find  out  the  underlying  factors  influence Arrado  dairy  cooperative  in raw milk marketing from the targeted pastoralists and to improve the position of dairy cooperative in milk  value  chain. Purposive, Census  and  simple  random  sampling  was  employed  as  sampling  techniques  to select a total of 50 respondents. An interview was conducted to collect the required information from a total of 25 respondents. Questionnaire were used to collect the required data from dairy cooperative members.  Secondary data from published and unpublished sources were also used in the study. Descriptive statistics inferential statstics such as, frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation, X²-test & independent t-test were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that there are different factors and actors affecting the volume of milk procurement by Arrado dairy cooperative. Among these factors and actors, side selling of milk by its members, competition from private trades and Hotel/Cafes, high cost feeds which leads to reduced/influence volume milk produced, are  some  of  the  major  factors  and  actors  that  cause  decline  of  milk  procurement  by  Arrado  dairy cooperative.  There were different factors that affects household’s milk marketing choices such as, family size, children less than seven years old, education level of the respondent, milk price offered by different marketing outlets, milk produced per household per day, and access for extension service. The dairy cooperative should provide strong economic benefit for its members through sharing and pooling of resources to collect huge volume of milk from them.

Keywords: Arrado  dairy  cooperative