Dairy Value Chain Upgrading in Bishoftu Town, East Shewa, Oromia, Ethiopia

Despite tremendous potential for dairy production in Ethiopia, the sector is not upgraded generally in the country and specifically in Bishoftu town. Dairy value chain upgrading was analyzed with objectives of identifying actors in dairy value chain upgrading and measuring their performances. Data were collected in the town at dairy producers’ level, traders (retailers) level and expert level through structured questionnaire and key informant interviews. Censuses of 141 dairy producers were conducted by dividing them into three different scale farm producers. Accordingly producers who have 1-5 dairy cows were categorized as small scale producers, 6-10 medium scale producers and >11 dairy cows were taken as large scale dairy farms. Based on this classification there were 100, 34, and 7 small, medium and large scale dairy respectively in the town. It was assumed that all large scale were processors, but one producer was found to be non-processor and was omitted from census survey. So, the survey was conducted with 140 dairy producers in the town. Data were analyzed by value chain analysis. The results from the descriptive statistics shows that from total dairy producers 46% were processing dairy /milk into yogurt, cheese and butter. Twenty four percent of the producers convert milk into yogurt, 11% process into cheese and butter, and another 11% process dairy into yogurt, cheese and butter. Therefore, producers’ socioeconomic factors and institutional factors needed to be strengthened by supportive activities like training for capacity building of producers in order to upgrade dairy value chain in town.