Abstract:

Smallholder dairy cattle producers in Uganda face major production constraints including
inadequate and poor quality feeds. This has led to low milk yield, long calving intervals and
low growth rates. Forage technologies have been widely recommended to alleviate this
problem. However, farmers are only expected to take them up if it is profitable to do so.
Thus, this study aimed at comparing the profitability of dairy cattle enterprises using
improved forage technologies (IFT) with those using local technologies, determining the
factors affecting the use of improved forage technologies among smallholder dairy farmers
in Soroti District and comparing the factors responsible for profitability of dairy cattle
enterprises using improved forage technologies with those using local technology. Data
were collected on a random sample of 121 farmers from two purposively selected subcounties
in Soroti district. The analytical tools used included descriptive statistics, partial
budget analyses, the probit model, and the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS).
Results indicated that farmers using IFT had significantly (p<0.01) larger gross margin with
lower cost of production than those using local feeding methods. However, both the
farmers who used the traditional technologies and those who used IFT had a positive gross
margin. Data analysis using the probit model indicated that profitability of forage
technology alone did not influence the decision to use IFT, but it did so when interacted
with improved cattle breed. This implies that profitability and improved cattle breed had
complementary effects on the decision to use IFT. Other factors that significantly increased the likelihood of IFT use included access to credit (p<0.1) and membership to farmer
group (p<0.01). Age (p<0.01), educational level of the household head (p<0.01) and the
size of land owned (p<0.05) significantly reduced the probability to use IFT.
Much of the difference between profitability levels for IFT users and non-users was
attributed to milking herd size (p<0.01) and distance to the market ((p<0.05), which
benefited IFT non-users as compared to the users, stocking density (p<0.05) and age of
the household head (p<0.1) favored IFT users, while membership to farmer group
(p<0.01) and access to credit (p<0.05) negatively affected profitability for IFT users but
had no impact on IFT non-users. These differentiating factors suggest that farmers may or
may not use improved forage technologies and still be able to obtain as high profitability
levels as possible. The major implications from the study findings were that use of IFT is
labor saving and profitable. This suggests that policies targeting efficient dissemination of
improved forage technologies are urgently needed. These should emphasize increasing
credit markets in rural areas and target farmer group formation as these are major factors
necessary in order to enhance the use of IFT. In addition, farmers should be availed with
the necessary inputs especially forage seed. Similar studies such as this one should be
carried out in other areas. Impact studies that consider long-terms impacts are also
recommended.