Milk production and consumption
Abstract : Milk products are considered as the essential food commodities for humans. Milk products contain essential elements for the human body such as protein, glucose, minerals and vitamins. Moreover, milk is considered the cheapest source of animal protein, an important resource for some related transformation industries and provides employment opportunities for a large number of small producers in both rural and urban areas. The aim of this paper is to analyze the factors which determine the supply and demand for liquid milk (henceforth milk) in the Middle East and North Africa in order to point out the main problems and constraints obstructing the milk production in this region. The research also attempts to understand the drivers for the development in milk production in the Middle East and North Africa.Total milk production in the Middle East and North Africa increased from about 12.57 million tons in 1990 to about 25.18 millions tons in 2008. This paper attempts to identify the factors which infl uence the eff ectiveness of production, consumption and foreign trade of milk in the Middle East and North Africa. The most important factors aff ecting consumption is the population, per capita income and produced quantity where a 1% increase in all of them results in increasing the quantity consumed by 1.3%, 2.86% and 0.611%, respectively. Milk sector provides employment opportunities for more than 25% of the working force in some Middle East and North Africa countries.
? Rising demands for milk and milk products will put India under constant pressure to maintain the existing growth in milk production.
? The supply projections under different scenarios indicate that with existing growth rate of milk production during the previous decade, India would continue to remain self-sufficient in milk even in 2026–27.
? Where subsidies exist, they support production or transportation, but their level is not always eff ective.
? The practice of integrated crop-milk production system might be essential at this time to improve the management of farms and reduce the feed cost.
? The aim of this paper is to analyze the factors which determine the supply and demand for liquid milk (henceforth milk) in the Middle East and North Africa in order to point out the main problems and constraints obstructing the milk production in this region.
? In EU the breeders of dairy cattle struggle with a number of problems arising from the cost escalation, and from the dramatic fall of milk purchase prices.
? The problems resulted in (not being achieved) the optimum use of natural resources, livestock, wealth and the potentials available for developing the milk sector in the Middle East and North Africa.
? The study adopted descriptive analysis to introduce the study problem.
• The dairy owners were neither engaged nor interested in converting the milk into milk products for selling purpose.
• They converted milk in to various products such as Ghee, Dahi and for only their domestic need. Consumption of fluid milk at their home varied from 2 to 10 per cent among all dairy owners.
• Whole quantity of milk produced is neither consumed at home nor supply of to the market.
• After meeting the requirement of the family consumption, remaining quantity of milk is either converted into milk products at home or it is supplied directly to the consumers or to the Halwaies/Hotels etc.
? It also allows the total impacts of the changes insignifi cant variables on the rest of the variables included in the model to be estimated. In addition, the elasticity estimated using method is usually more effi cient.
? Due to the weak performance of the milk sector in the Middle East and North Africa which is refl ected in low production, this sector fails to meet the growing consumption requirements in this region.
? The coefficient of determination (R2) indicates that around 98% of the variations in the volume of milk production is linearly correlated with time.
? The least square method is used to identify the main factors aff ecting the studied variables
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