EXPLORING THE DETERMINANTS OF MILK PRODUCTION IN SMALLHOLDER DAIRY FARMING

Abstract

ABSTRACT The objectives of this study were to describe the selected characteristics of the smallholder dairy farmers, to determine the average yield of milk production in small scale dairy farming and to identify the contribution of the farmers selected characteristics to the milk production of their rearing cows. The study was conducted in four villages of two unions under Bhandaria upazila of Pirojpur district. A total of 93 smallholder dairy farmers were selected randomly from a population of 229 dairy farmers. Data were collected from the dairy farmers during the period of 27th December, 2019 to 12th February, 2020 by using an interview schedule. Multiple regression coefficient was used to examine the contribution of the selected factors of the smallholder dairy farmers. The majority (48.3 percent) of the dairy farmers belonged to medium production category followed by low production (36.6 percent) and high production (15.1 percent). Among the respondents, a total of 84.9 percent respondents had low to medium production performance. Seventy point three percent (R2 = 0.703) of the variation in the respondents’ milk production performance can be attributed to their age, education, farm size, annual family income, training in cattle rearing, extension media contact, experience in dairy farming, time spends in cattle rearing, cattle herd size, farmers knowledge on milk production and number of milking cow. Multiple regressions exposed that number of milking cow, farmer’s knowledge on milk production, cattle herd size and training in cattle rearing were significant contributing factors. Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that smallholder dairy farmer’s individual milk production performance is low but there is an ample scope to increase milk production considering these significant factors by the personnel of DLS.