Can African livestock production systems maintain, or better yet improve, their share of provision of dairy products to African consumers, particularly those in urban areas?
Meeting the food needs of urban populations is of growing concern in developing countries. The case of dairy products in sub-saharan Africa is illustrative. Demand for milk and dairy products exceeds supply in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Brokken and Seyoum, 1992). Over the last decades, the population growth in SSA, combined with rising per capita income has caused rapid growth in food consumption, in particular of dairy products. The World Bank (1992) has estimated that demand for milk and dairy products in SSA will increase by 5.5 million tonnes by the year 2025, an annual growth rate of 4%, questioning the supply side.
Much of this increased demand will be concentrated in urban areas. The population in SSA is expected to increase by 2.75% a year between 1990 and 2025, resulting in an additional 800 million people to feed. Of these, over 500 million will be in cities and large towns. Meeting the food needs of these people will present an enormous challenge to African farmers and their governments for whom welfare of urban consumers is becoming a political concern.
The rapid growth in consumption has been principally covered by imports of basic staples (7% growth per year). Commercial dairy imports in SSA have increased steadily since 1960, and absorbed in 1980 about five percent of the region's total revenue from agricultural, forestry and fishery exports (von Massow, 1989). Many countries cannot sustain this situation. Implementation of the structural adjustment policies would furthermore discourage imports through devaluation.
Although inadequate to meet the increase in demand, marketed dairy production is already increasing in most African countries, as a direct response to consumer demand, to changes in the infrastructure in rural areas (better road system, input markets...), or as a result of development efforts to promote smallholder dairy production Justified by the above). For smallholders, dairying allows year-round employment of the family labour force, provides a means of intensifying land use when it is a limiting resource, and milk often plays the role of a "cash crop", hence insuring regular income.
Acknowledging the feet that dairy producers may find a primary market among their rural neighbours, under exploited market opportunities exist in nearby urban markets, where the challenge in meeting consumers, demand lies. Producing household targeting urban consumers will have access to larger markets and better prices, and hence achieve higher returns than it they were to target only local, rural consumers. It is also more likely that increased supply might result from an increase in the current herd productivity, and from more efficient marketing channels, than from an increase in the size of the producing herd.
The development of dairy production aimed at "distant" markets is a recent trend in SSA. As can be expected with recent trends, it is at various stages around different consumer centres, which are expressed by some variations in its components (Walshe et al, 1992)
- Types of farmers involved: from specialised smallholders (like in the Kenyan highlands) to recently sedentarised pastoralists (like in West Africa); within sites, farmers are also implementing different strategies to organise dairy production as a response to differences in farm structure (land, labour, cash availability) and organization of input and output markets- consumption patterns of dairy products are also varying across the continent according to income level and cultural tastes and preferences (semi-processed dairy, processed dairy, fresh milk)
- marketing channels vary from place to place: direct selling, and involvement of commercial farms and enterprises.
The diversity in the components of dairy systems and in their combination has not been documented in SSA. Knowledge and understanding of this diversity, however, is needed to foresee research needs and development prospects.
Although in a process of dynamic change, market-oriented dairy production is facing several constraints in its sustainable development; these address the different components: feed-resource base, upgraded genotype, management of reproduction, diseases of intensification, efficiency of collection, processing and marketing mechanisms and policy environment. These constraints affect the different dairy systems in varied ways depending the characteristics of the systems and the level of market integration.
Thus, the current milk deficit, combined with large projected increase in demand as a result of both population and income growth, represents a major market opportunity for domestic dairy producers. As a consequence of the magnitude of the challenge and the good prospects for market-oriented dairy production, in many African countries, dairy systems have become a priority area for research and development agencies; still,
- development agencies are looking for adapted means to overcome a number of constraints and difficulties which are identified.- National Agricultural Research Systems have repeatedly stated the need for methodologies to design relevant interventions on dairy systems.
This framework presents and organises a set of potential research activities which can be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa by National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) and/or ILCA to answer the question of a better provision of dairy products to consumer centres, with due consideration for the variety of situations and problems dairy systems are facing.
ILCA has research teams currently carrying on activities on dairy production and marketing around several consumer centres. They constitute locations within this framework, but do not preclude research at other locations representative of the different ecozones and production systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
