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Dairy Production Sector In Ukraine

Ukraine became independent and took its first steps towards a market economy in 1991.The country continues its
transition to market economy and remains very promising in terms of future economic growth and investment
opportunities.

Compared to other European countries, Ukraine still has a significant potential for further growth of dairy industry.
Favourable for the development of livestock climatic conditions, relatively low cost of feed and labour ensure domestic
producers all the prerequisites for profitable production and possibility to compete with producers from other countries.

In Ukraine, milk producing farms are mostly concentrated in the central and north-western part of Ukraine (Figure 1), and
dairy plants tend to follow the same pattern. According to the official statistics, in 2007 Ukraine had about 600 dairy
plants and approximately 3,700 milk producing agricultural enterprises. However, these farms produced less than
20% of the national volume of raw milk. The major numbers of cows are grown within so called “individual subsidiary
households”. These individual households and small family farms currently are important suppliers of dairy and
meat products to local population and to the processing industry.

Figure 1.

The population of cows has decreased over the last two years by 17,7%. The decline of dairy livestock was observed
in all Ukrainian oblasts, excepted Chernigiv.

Positive values of the profitability of milk production have occurred mainly on large scaled farms, which already operate
effectively. As a result of this tendency, the most essential increase of dairy livestock has been observed in the
companies that already have over 1,000 cows.

The production of raw milk in Ukraine has a seasonal pattern (Figure 2). Individual households have much higher supply
fluctuations compared to larger dairy farms. This is explained mostly by the fact that the households do not have enough
livestock to plan and organize a continuous supply of milk. However, this seasonality of dairy farm production points at
another problem – lack of managerial skills on farms.
Figure 2

Another important point to mention is the low productivity of milk production in agri-enterprises. Now the
productivity of dairy livestock is very low as compared to the average productivity in developed countries (Figure
3). Nevertheless, some dairy farms in Ukraine are also capable of reaching the productivity level of western nations.
Although at a dairy farm an average cow yields 3.1 tons of milk, the majority of Ukrainian cows do not produce more than
2,000 liters of milk.
Figure 3

Along with this, a promising tendency is that the number of enterprises with annual yields per cow exceeding
6,000 liters has been constantly on the rise. In 2006, the number of such farms was 181 and in 2007 it rose
to 195. The share of these agricultural companies is 3.6% in the total number of agricultural enterprises, but
their share in the total milk production amounts to 13%. Milk quality supplied to dairy processing plans by larger
agricultural farms is higher than the quality of milk produced by individual households.

The issue of the low efficiency of milk production and lower revenues obtained by milk producers can be explained chiefly
by an insufficient optimization and an inefficient use of resources.

Profitability Of Milk Production

Considering the most important tendencies of milk production at agricultural enterprises in Ukraine and outlining the
structural changes which are taking place in the milk sector, we can maintain the fact that during the last few years
according to the official statistics the positive values of milk profitability of dairy farms have been occurring mainly
at farms with over 500 heads of cows.

Raw Milk Production

In total Ukraine has been producing 12-14 mln tons of raw milk annually over the last 6-7 years. The biggest share of this
milk was produced by households. As a result of the transition from the Soviet planned to a market economy and the
economic crises in the mid-90s, the share of households in the total raw milk production increased from 24% in 1990 to
82% in 2007 (Table 1).
Table 1. Characteristics of raw milk production in Ukraine (1990-2007)

1990 1995 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007


Cows in milk, miln. heads:
Dairy farms 6.2 4.6 1.7 1.4 1.1 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.7
Households 2.2 2.9 3.2 3.3 3.2 3.0 2.8 2.7 2.5
Total 8.4 7.5 4.9 4.7 4.3 3.9 3.6 3.4 3.1
Yield, t/cow:
Dairy farms 3.0 1.9 2.1 2.2 2.1 2.5 2.9 3.2 3.1
Households 2.7 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.9 3.8
Total 2.9 2.2 2.7 2.9 2.9 3.2 3.5 3.6 3.6
Fluid Milk, miln. t:
Dairy farms 18.6 9.4 3.6 3.5 2.7 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.2
Households 5.9 7.8 9.8 10.7 11.0 11.2 11.1 10.8 10.1
Total 24.5 17.3 13.4 14.1 13.7 13.7 13.7 13.3 12.3

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