The performance of dairy enterprises in peri urban areas. A case study of Lugazi municipality.

Abstract

This study was conducted to assess and evaluate the performance of dairy enterprises in peri-urban areas using Lugazi municipality as a case study. A total of 60 farmers were selected in three randomly selected parishes in Lugazi and a snowball sampling procedure was adopted through which questionnaires were used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Findings on farmers’ demographics show that majority of farmers are male, amounting to 73.33% and 66.67% had experience of 6 years and above. Ages of the farmers range from youths of 28 years to middle aged farmers of 55 and majority falling around 41. O level is the dominant level of education attained at 31.67%. The socio-economic characteristics of the enterprises show that majority of the farmers started up their dairy farms as secondary income source as majority rely on salary and small businesses for income. Result from the study reveal an impressive profitability of 93% and productivity measured at 67%, this shows that the venture is a lucrative one and only requires exploitation of the unexploited productivity measured to at 33% below average in cross bred animals. The average milk output by cows is 10 liters yet it's expected to be 15 liters. The difference between the two values is the unexploited productivity which needs to be tapped by following recommendations given in this paper. Significant factors that influence profitability were: level of experience in years, breed of the animal, sex of the farmer, and group membership. Peri-urban dairy farming is possibly an effective method to alleviate poverty, ensure food and nutrition security in built up areas and also facilitate agro industrialization by providing raw materials to dairy processing industries. Once the untapped productivity is exploited through recommendations in this paper, the performance of the enterprises can be raised and sustained regardless of the threats of urbanization to agricultural in built up areas.