This paper explores the spatial heterogeneity in dairy production in the highland production area around the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. We look at how urban proximity – defined as the travel time from the farm to the central market of Addis Ababa – affects the production decisions of Ethiopian dairy farmers. We sampled 870 households from the major rural production zones around Addis Ababa, where villages were stratified according to their distance to Addis Ababa. Using an instrumental variable approach, we find evidence of strong spatial heterogeneity in dairy milk productivity in Ethiopia. With each additional hour of travel time, the milk productivity per cow is reduced by almost 1 liter per day, a reduction by 26 percent on average. This spatial heterogeneity in milk productivity reflects a pronounced spatial variation in dairy production decisions (producing liquid milk or processed dairy products), the application of modern inputs, and marketing. When trying to disentangle the mechanisms through which urban proximity affects dairy productivity, we show that the effect of travel time mainly runs through farmers’ inclusion into ‘modern’ value chains and more specifically through their access to commercial milk buyers. This finding holds when we control for prices, indicating that access to commercial value chains are an important determinant of dairy productivity. However, as only a limited number of farmers now have access to such value chains in these settings, measures to make dairy value chains more inclusive to remote farmers can have important economic development benefits for them.

We combine in-person survey data collected in February 2018 with phone survey data collected in June and September 2021 to study how dairy value chains in Ethiopia have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the major dairy value chain connecting farmers in North and West Shewa as well as peri-urban and urban producers in and around Addis Ababa to consumers in Addis Ababa, we applied a cascading survey approach in which we collected data at all levels of the value chain: dairy farmers, rural wholesalers, and urban retailers.

In the transformation of agri-food systems in developing countries, we usually see rapid changes in the livestock sector. However, good data for clearly understanding this transformation are often lacking, especially so in Africa. Relying on a combination of diverse large-scale datasets and methods, we analyze transformation patterns in the dairy value chain supplying Addis Ababa, the capital and biggest city of Ethiopia. Over the last decade, we note a rapid increase in expenditures on dairy products by urban consumers, especially among the better-off. Relatedly, the number of dairy processing firms in Ethiopia tripled over the same period, supplying a significant part of these dairy products, especially pasteurized milk, to the city’s residents. The number of dairy traders increased rapidly as well, with competition between them becoming more intense over time. Upstream at the production level, we find improved access to livestock services, higher adoption of cross-bred cows, a shift from grazing to commercial feeds, an increase in milk yields, expanding liquid milk markets, a sizable urban farm sector supplying almost one-third of all liquid milk consumed in the city, and an upscaling process with larger commercial dairy farms becoming more prevalent. However, average milk yields are still low and not all dairy farmers are included in this transformation process. Small farms with dairy animals as well as those in more remote areas benefit less from access to services and adopt less these modern practices. For these more disadvantaged farmers, stagnation in milk yields and even declines – depending on the data source used – are observed.

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, , language: English, abstract: Ethiopia is one of the Sub-Saharan Africa’s developing countries with a large potential in livestock, being 1st among African countries and 9th in the world. Dairying is one of the livestock production systems practiced in almost all over Ethiopia. The cattle population was estimated at about 50.9 million of which indigenous breeds accounted for 99.19 % while the rest is hybrids and pure exotic breeds. The main objective of this seminar is to review the challenges and opportunities of investment in dairy sector in Ethiopia. Dairy production in Ethiopia was mostly traditional and formal dairy production started in the early 1950s. In Ethiopia the three major production systems are: traditional smallholder; privatized state; and urban and peri-urban. Ethiopians consume less dairy products than per capita milk consumption and the country is not known to export dairy product and spent more money on importing milk and milk products. The livestock sector in general and the dairy sub-sector in particular do not make a substantial contribution to the national income, despite its large size, due to different challenges. The challenges are those attributed to demand and supply sides. Demand side includes population growth, seasonality of demand, low per capita consumption, low demand and high transaction costs. Supply side challenges can be: livestock population, animal health problem, feed and nutrition, low productivity and genetics, limited access and high cost of dairy heifers/cows, quality problem, collection problems, institutional concern, lack of technical support, inadequate extension and training services, lack of infrastructures, lack of access to land and lack of credit. This challenge lowers the investment activity in the sector in Ethiopia. Dairy sector investments have also different opportunities like huge resource base and potential for development, favorable conditions and potential for value chain development, huge increasing consumer demand for milk and dairy products, potential role in import substitution, conducive government policies, laws and regulations, income generation and employment opportunities and indigenous knowledge.

We study post-harvest losses (PHL) in important and rapidly growing rural-urban value chains in Ethiopia. We analyze self-reported PHL from different value chain agents – farmers, wholesale traders, processors, and retailers – based on unique large-scale data sets for two major commercial commodities, the storable staple teff and the perishable liquid milk. PHL in the most prevalent value chain pathways for teff and milk amount to between 2.2 and 3.3 percent and 2.1 and 4.3 percent of total produced quantities, respectively. We complement these findings with primary data from urban food retailers for more than 4,000 commodities. Estimates of PHL from this research overall are found to be significantly lower than is commonly assumed. We further find that the emerging modern retail sector in Ethiopia is characterized by half the level of PHL than are observed in the traditional retail sector. This is likely due to more stringent quality requirements at procurement, sales of more packaged – and therefore better protected – commodities, and better refrigeration, storage, and sales facilities. The further expected expansion of modern retail in these settings should likely lead to a lowering of PHL in food value chains, at least at the retail level.

This study of the dairy value chain in the Oromia region of Ethiopia was conducted as part of the AgrInvest-Food Systems Project, a collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) to promote private investments in African food systems that contribute to local economic, social and environmental sustainability.