Small scale cattle farmers and their sustainability in lowland villages of Adana province, Turkey

S G Karakok

Cukurova University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Animal Science, Adana, Turkey
sgoncu@cu.edu.tr

Abstract

In Turkey, livestock sector represents 30% of the contribution of agriculture to gross domestic production (GDP). There are 4 million agricultural enterprises, of which 96% are mixed crop-livestock farms. Cattle are kept on approximately 65% of farms; the mean number of animals on these farms is 4 cattle. Fragmented structure of the cattle farmers is accepted problem by the many groups of people. Their sustainability and contribution to national welfare are neglected. But in the world, small-scale farms described as grow high quality food, active in civic life and essential to the economic vitality of both their hometowns and the nation.

In this study, small scale cattle farmers and their sustainability in lowland villages of Adana province were investigated. Primary data resource of the study is the survey carried out among the dairy farmers located in Ceyhan, Yumurtalık and Karatas district. Dairy farmers were selected randomly during the village visits. Survey study was carried out using face-to-face interviewing method from September 2003 to June 2005 and 105 (Ceyhan (n=40), Yumurtalık (n=35) and Karatas(n=30)) dairy farmers were interviewed during this period.

Key words: Adana, cattle farmers, small scale, sustainability

Introduction

In Turkey, livestock sector represents 30% of the contribution of agriculture to GDP. There are 4 million agricultural enterprises, of which 96% are mixed crop-livestock farms. Cattle are kept on approximately 65% of farms; the mean number of animals on these farms is 4 cattle. There are just over 4 million farm households in Turkey. 67% of these farms each owns between 0.1-5 hectares of land, (22% of total agricultural land), while only 33% of households own more than 5 hectares - comprising 78% of available agricultural land. A large proportion of the production is consumed by the household, and the rest is generally marketed through middlemen, because of the distances from urban centers. Livestock products, including meat, milk, eggs, wool, and hides, contributed more than 33 percent of the value of agricultural output in the mid-1990s. Over 45% of income in rural areas is earned directly from agriculture. Agriculture and livestock are key components of the livelihoods of the poor. Livestock make a substantial contribution to household livelihoods' and currently sustain the livelihoods of an estimated 700 million rural poor in developing countries.

Poverty levels are high and more than 35% of the population relies on the agriculture sector for employment and income generation in many developing countries. The family owned farm is the basic unit of agricultural production, and family members provide most of the farm labor. Household food security is very important for the impoverished populations in the developing countries, both in rural and pen-urban areas. Problems can be alleviated by promoting the development of family enterprises utilization of available resources. Small-scale cattle farms contribute significantly to the nation's food supply and to local economies. They strengthen rural communities and contribute to a diverse and pleasing rural landscape. Most cattle are still under traditional management relying mainly on extensive grazing, and receiving poor quality feed, particularly in winter, and in most cases very little veterinary care. Fragmented structure of the cattle farmers is accepted problem by the many groups of people. Their sustainability and contribution to national welfare are neglected. But in the world, small-scale farms described as grow high quality food, active in civic life and essential to the economic vitality of both their hometowns and the nation. As owner of the land, small-scale farms work to protect the soil, air, water, and biodiversity in addition to producing high-quality, healthy food for everyone. Small scale farms can be profitable, but they will need to overcome some inherent problems before this can be achieved. Some of the limitations facing small farm operators can be overcome by a cooperative effort of a group of small farm producers through a sharing of goals, activities, and objectives of members. But cooperation between the farmers in lowland villages of Adana was very poor because of the many reasons. But cattle farming are very important for family nutrition. Because cattle provide the family, milk, meat and the cash money for future. Especially woman, old people and children in family can consume animal protein (yogurt, milk and meat) by using animal products. Furthermore, woman gets money from marketing animal products which produce at family farm. Income from the dairy enterprise was used to meet costs of various items including; buying food, paying for health services, school fees, purchase of new assets, paying bills for water and electricity and building houses. small-scale dairy farming has a potential of improving the welfare of households. For many reason, small scale farming in this area is very essential for this people. Small scale farming is subsisting till now although many attempts were made in the past to abandon farming operations.

The aim of this study was to investigate the small scale cattle farmers and their sustainability in lowland villages of Adana province in Turkey.
 

Materials and method

Adana situated in the south part of Turkey. Temperatures varies from 27 to 30 °C in daytime and 17 to 22°C in nights, average temperature is about 23°C in Adana in October. Besides, relative humidity varies between 60% and 90%. Adanaprovince surface area is 14.03 km² , Attitude is 23 m and Mediterranean Seashore is 160 km. The population of Adana was 1849478, number of districts was 13, number of Municipalities was 53 and number of villages was 544. Adana has two regional parts. The first one is fertile Cukurova plain and the second is Taurus (Toros) Mountainous area.

Primary data resource of the study is the survey carried out among the dairy farmers in lowland region of Adana located in Ceyhan, Yumurtalık and Karatas. The population of study constituted 105 small-scale dairy farmers who had dairy cattle at the time of study in Adana province. Dairy farmers were selected randomly during the village visits. Survey study was carried out using face-to-face interviewing method from September 2004 to June 2005 and 105 (Ceyhan (n=40), Yumurtalık (n=35) and Karatas (n=30) dairy farmers were interviewed.

The collected survey data was coded and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 9.0) for windows. In which the following major parameters: household characteristics (age, sex, education, occupation of respondent, number of dairy cattle) and general management (feeding, milking, milk marketing, constraints) were considered. Descriptive statistics were computed for the above parameters and cross tabulation was done for some variables to test their relationship.
 

Results and discussion

Adana province total population is 1849473 and 1397853 of them live in the city (64.90%) and 451625 of people live in the villages (35.10%). Milk production increased 51% between 1980 and 1995 from 5.5 to 10.6 million tones. During this period, the contribution of cattle to milk production rose from 62% to 87%, mainly because of the increase in the more productive cross-bred population. Per capita consumption of milk and red meat products has decreased and meat consumption has shifted over time from beef, veal, lamp, mutton and goat to a greater consumption of poultry and fish due to changing tastes, costs and income (Akbay and Boz 2005). For example, annual per capita consumption of milk fell from 175 kg in 1960 to 98.1 kg in 2002. Per capita total meat consumption has increased from 21.0 kg in 1960 to 35.0 kg in 2002 even though red meat consumption has decreased from 14.2 kg to 9.42 kg in the same period (Akbay and Boz 2005; FAO 2005). These changes occurred both in urban and rural areas. However, these changes become more important for rural areas because of the growing food distribution channels and increasing household income and education levels of consumers. Cattle population of Adana province was given in Table 1. regarding to the each district.

Culture: Holstein (black and white)

According to the Ministry of Agriculture database, district cattle population of Adana province is given in Table 1. Total cattle population is 142966 head for province. Culture (Holstein) breed population of the province is 14579, their crosses with native breeds are 105143 head and native breed population is 23244 head (2004). Culture breeds and their crosses with native cattle breeds reached to 10.19% and 73.54% and native cattle breeds decreased to 16.25% in 2004. The data reflected that farmers preferred crosses to native or pure breed cattle (35.1% vs. 29.3%) and obvious reason for this is the farmer's preference for the resistance to the disease due to its high disease risk. The number of the number of holdings and their percentage in Adana and Turkey in given in Table 2

Another characteristic of the province is the small farm size. There are just over 85.493 farm households in Adana province. 63.9% of these farms each owns between 5-49 da of land. Yurdakul et al (1991) reported that small scale farmer was getting increase their land by rent or shareholder. Similarly this report, result of this study show that 21 % of the farmers were landless while 12.12% of the farmers rent land.

Socio-economic household characteristics

Major farm and household characteristics of the respondents are given in Table 1. All villages had primary school but infrastructure is very poor. The age of the respondents ranged between 22 and 76 years. The study indicated that most (68.58%) of the respondents were above the age of 40 years. From the study 100% of the respondents were male because the visits made the village resting house. But they reported that animal care was made by the woman in the house.

The educational level of the respondents ranged from primary school education to those with university education. It was observed that 98% of farmers had been literate. More than 75.75% of the respondents had attained primary education (Table 3).

Nevertheless the level of education had no significant effect on the level of milk production of the dairy cattle. Results of the study show that the dairy enterprise did not constitute the major source of income. Most of the respondents (71.43%) depended on the other activities (Table 3).

Generally in urban areas many people who depend mainly on salaries are now looking for alternative sources of supplementing income. Among the farmers, non-farm jobs were very low in the villages and women very restricted to do jobs due to social and cultural traditions

Cattle ownership

The study indicated that the average animal number of farmers ranged between 1 and 6 heads with the modal class being that of 2-4 heads. The most (60%) of the farmers have under the 6 heads. Percentage of the animals for age groups and average animal number to each farmer were given in Table 4.

As can be seen from Table 3 the average numbers of lactating animals were higher rate than dry and unproductive animals, so most of the time only lactating animals that could generate income were kept in these areas. Small farmers were found to use all possibilities to generate new income for household. Therefore to achieve this goal they also kept various varieties of other stocks along with dairy animals.

32.5% of the farmers reported that animal number in their farm decreased in last five years. The main reason for this decrease, farmers reported lack of any person to take care of their animals. But 45.7% of the farmers preferred, keep cattle number same level with 5 years ago for many reason mentioned before. Some of the farmers (21.8%) preferred increased the number of cattle in last five years. 65.8% farmers reported that want to continue dairy cattle farming in future while 34.2% farmers did not to sure about to continue.

Dairy cattle feeding

Results from this study show that farmers mostly prefer the grazing as it reduces cost of the production. Generally, cattle are still under traditional management relying mainly on extensive grazing, and receiving poor quality feed, particularly in winter, and in most cases very little veterinary care. It was also observed in the study that all the respondents were supplementing their cattle. However few of them (16.19%) only offered wheat bran and barley to their cattle where as the rest (73.33%) offered wheat bran, cotton seed cake and barley (Table 5).

Pasture is still the main source of feed; traditionally pasture areas belong to the state and are open for common use. Pastures play a very important role in ruminant feeding in this area. Pastures have lost their productivity due to continuous and irregular grazing. As a result of the above mentioned negative impacts, pastures are far from being able to fulfill their main functions. Plant cover of the pastures has reduced dramatically and is now unable to hold the soil, causing severe wind and water erosion problems. Villages rarely plan pasture management and it is left totally to the shepherds. Common areas are grazed free of charge, therefore they are not managed properly. Boundaries of pastures are not clearly determined and assigned to village communities. In the absence of tenure, the users have no incentives to invest in rangeland resources.

Milk production

Milk production ranged between 0 and 240 liters per day with respondents, producing between 6 and 15 liters per day. However the average milk production per cow per day of 8.2 ±2.4 was lower than those reported by Kumlu et al (1989) for Black and White crosses in Turkey. The low production may have been due to a number of factors. These factors can be summarized as lack of proper supplementary feeding of the dairy cattle, poor nutritive value of pastures and forages offered to the animals and lack of dairy husbandry training as none of the respondents had received any formal training in dairy husbandry. In farms close to urban centers less milk was processed to cheese, with most milk being sold fresh. On the other hand, in farms further removed from urban centers, 60-75.4% of farmers processed milk into cheese, yogurt, obviously to increase its shelf life. Cows were milked twice a day, in the morning and evening by the woman at home. Only 30% of farmers used milking machine. However, milking frequency depended on the farmer's decision. To initiate milk let-down, in some of the farmers (16.4%) calves were allowed limited suckling at the time of milking. They reported (90%) that they learned milking procedure from their parents and they did not get any training course for animal care.

Family members were involved in cattle management. Especially woman and daughters were responsible for cattle feeding and milking. Women are usually responsible for the intensive care of young stock, pregnant and lactating females. Boys in the house generally were involved in milk distribution to contract buyer and manure handling. Women and children worked average 2-3 hours/day in cattle management activities. Men generally were involved in making a deal to contract buyer and on cash collection. Women are generally main responsible family members for cattle management.

Marketing

Milk is one of the staple foods, providing such vital nutrients as calcium, protein, phosphorus and lipids, and, in many instances, is a major source of cash for the family. Milk collection and cooling centers are currently being established in one of the villages to facilitate marketing of the farmers' milk by cooperatives. Farmers will deliver their fresh milk in cans to the centers for sale. They reported that cooperative will sent the milk to nearest processing center for better marketing possibilities.

Farmers that have suffered from the low prices relative to cost of production. This survey over 57.14% of the farmers sold some of their milk to the middleman; 8.57% of the farmers sold some of their milk to the neighbors and 14.28% of the farmers made cheese of their at home. 14.28% of the farmers left their milk for daily family requirements. The quantities sold were dependent on production capacity of the cows. Milk price which is major complain of farmers, varies from 200 to 300 YTL which is market price is 3 times higher than this farm gate price. As expected, farmers alone (independently) cannot determine market prices due to lack of their own organization. These prices are set by the trader or middleman. The lack of good transportation is another reason for the low price. Therefore the minimum price should be accepted by them. There are also another problems remained to be solved related to transport, export and middleman as reported Yurdakul et al (1991). All respondents were complaining about the middleman problem. Farmers reported that middleman manifested different sort of problems. Farmers have to find a way to compete simply give up the animal husbandry.

Farmers surveyed have almost unanimously (90%) reported that a major benefit of a marketing cooperative business is to achieve an assured market for their products. 8% percent of farmers mentioned about higher prices they perceived cooperatives provided to member farmers and the remaining 2% valued reliable payments most. But farmers reported many problems with marketing cooperatives aspect of management and social factor involve village life.

Dairy income is usually used to purchase food and other household items, but it may also provide the means of financing some aspects of rural development. The amount of cash generated by dairying will depend on the form in which milk is marketed, the accessibility of markets, and on whether the prevailing pricing arrangements allow for a realistic margin between the purchase and sale prices of milk.

Artificial insemination

Most of the farmers preferred natural breeding system rather than artificial insemination (AI). Artificial insemination was chosen as the most appropriate method for breeding to enable culture breed semen to be used on the farmers' existing cows and to provide a "grading-up" mechanism for those crossbred cows. This survey showed over 48.36% of the farmers preferred natural service; 32.57% of the farmers use AI and natural service which guarantee for fertility and 19.07% of the farmers used only AI which is mostly member of the association. Karakok and Ulubilir (2005) reported that the main problem of small scale farmers determined as infertility and they compared two different synchronization methods to improve conception rate. The results show that conception rates of the groups were determined similar as average 58%. But it was observed that conception rate at farm level is about 33%. Farmers have many limitations to AI as mainly price and time. Especially, 45.42% of the farmers accepted AI as conception instruments not a breeding method to improve genetic value of the herd while remain part of the farmers did not any comment about this question. But it was obvious the introduction of AI would provide farmers an opportunity to transform the herd structure by the introduction of "proven dairy semen" with a great potential to produce better heifers, thereby increasing milk production.

Despite the efforts made by the public sector natural service is still considered to be the best. Their main reason for this is price and availability of natural service for 24 hours. In case of AI, farmers had to take their animals to the AI centers or contact with the concerned person. So farmers had to depute a person for this job or have to leave or suspend other farm activities for some time which is usually not affordable by the farmers. In addition to these reason, extensive cattle farming suggested that another important factor to prefer to natural service to AI (Pekel et al 1986).

Several steps have been taken by the government to increase large ruminant production; the main efforts have been given to genotype improvement. Initially local breeds were improved through selection; several breeds were thus treated. Then State Farms established programs to distribute pure and cross-bred livestock to farmers. Later on artificial insemination centers were started by the government. In remote areas, where artificial insemination was not feasible, bulls of high yielding breeds were provided temporarily or permanently (free of charge) to villages. In the meantime several research and extension projects have been organized with local and foreign resources. Subsidies have been provided to inputs such as breeding material, medicine, feed and shelter, and animal health care. Animals were vaccinated free of charge against infectious diseases. Importation of pure breeds has been accepted practice by all governments. The general trend in the last 10 years is importation of pregnant animals. Consequently the share of pure and cross-breeds in Turkey have increased to 54.9% in 2000.

Animal health

Appropriate control and management of animal diseases on farm promotes animal welfare and livestock productivity. 70% of the farmers reported that women were responsible for animal reproduction and health problems. They also reported that mostly women in general have more in-depth knowledge of traditional medicine and pharmaceutical practices than do men at farm. Farmers tended to ask to their wives for information on how many calves had been born or had died, or last vaccinations and date etc. There is a strong link between holding size and woman responsibilities rate. It was observed that animal number getting increase man get more responsibilities on farm level.

Most farmers complained about that lack of extension service for them to obtain information about the animal care. If any disease occurred either they asked other farmers or brought medicine by themselves. They keep some drugs at barn for emergency. Only 35% of the farmers called a veterinary when animal can not stand up for a while after disease because of the high veterinary cost. Routine vaccinations were provided free of charge by the Department of Animal Health and Production of the Ministry of Agriculture. Only 18% of the farmers which was member of the cattle association keep written records of all treatments and identify treated animals appropriately.

Common problems were reported as infertility, ephemeral fever, brucellosis and foot and mouth disease while mastitis was not explained as a problem which encounter by the responders. This can be accepted natural result of the milkers differences which done by the woman or hired labor at these area.

Major problems

Farmers generally complain about general animal care difficulties. 50% of the farmers reported that if they found another job they abandon animal operations. They can not abandon because of the financial support to family income. One of the most important observations during the survey is an inadequate soil resource base to provide the nutrients and moisture essential to plant growth. Especially two parts of the survey region appears to have reached or passed the safe limits for the horizontal expansion of agricultural production. But farmers did not aware of this subject. The major constraints to smallholder dairy farming according to the farmers were milk price 60.6%, middleman (24.6%), infertility (5.0) feedstuff (4.4%), theft of dairy animals (2.6%), and diseases (1.8%), other (1%).

Sustainability

Three broad areas of concern seem to underlie the concept of sustainable agriculture: (i) economic concerns over economic justice, the survival of owner-operated farms and the long-term profitability of agriculture; (ii) environmental concerns over adverse impacts of agriculture on land, water, and wildlife resources; and (iii) public welfare concerns over food quality and human exposure to toxic chemicals (Weil, 1990). Farrell and Hart (1998) state that in many cases, indicators to measure sustainability are no more than combined lists of traditional economic, environmental and social indicators with the word 'sustainable' added to the title. Nevertheless, such combination is a first significant step because it recognizes that all three areas (economic, ecological and social) matter. But, no single indicator can possibly answer all questions and therefore multi-dimensional indicators can be needed (Opschoor, 2000; Veleva and Ellenbecker, 2001). Recently, different frameworks and indicator systems have emerged that claim to evaluate sustainability both at firm level and at higher level. Most of the focus in measuring and evaluating progress towards sustainable development has been at the national level. Well known examples are the ecological footprints, genuine savings, the index of sustainable economic welfare and the dashboard of sustainability. Sustainability is a global concept and a firm is only a small subsystem that interacts in various ways with surrounding systems. Tyteca (1998) showed that the principles of productive efficiency can be used to elaborate sustainability indicators at the firm level. Callens and Tyteca (1999) worked out indicators based on both the concepts of cost- benefit analysis and the principles of productive efficiency.

Pookpakdi (1992) reported that in evolving more sustainable production systems, agriculture and rural development efforts should be directed towards three essential goals; food security, employment and income generation in rural areas, in order to eradicate poverty and natural resource conservation and environmental protection. It has been recognized that the root causes of environmental degradation are social and institutional in nature. Measures to address the problem will require integrated strategies which involve an adjustment of policies, values, and institutional structures. The major thrust of the strategy for creating the conditions for sustainability for the poor must aim at eradicating poverty.

In our study showed that farmers were not aware of the sustainability of their system. Most farmers has manure management problem, overgrazing pastures and mismanaging the manure. 65% of the farmers reported that they store manure and bedding waste before it was spread on their orchard or field; 22% of the farmers sell the manure while 13% give the people free of charge. Also 90% of the farmers reported that government must do pasture management to village use because of the financial problems. But generally, livestock farms, regardless of size, are facing increasing attention about the way they affect the environment. Many factors can affect a farm's impact on the environment. These factors include the animal type (kind), size, and number; the distance to water; the soil type; the weather; and the distance to neighbors Mismanaging the manure can lead to fly and odor problems. If rain washes manure into nearby streams or wells, the nitrogen and phosphorus found in manure can cause poor water quality.

An analyze of comparing sustainability performance of the small farms of different area would be very interesting but very difficult because of data constraints.
 

Conclusions

• It can be concluded from this study that small-scale dairy farming in lowland of Adana province contributes a great deal to the household welfare in terms of food security, income generation and other social services. It may also be concluded from this study that small-scale dairy farming is mainly carried out as an income supplementing activity rather than as a main source of income. Improved management in terms of marketing, feeding, breeding and disease control is essential for productivity of these farms.

• The study compared the impact of shifting agriculture and organic production on small-farmer production and incomes. The results suggest that organic agriculture may be an attractive alternative for diversifying the production of small farmers. While the case studies showed evolution of different production costs, yields and product prices among small farmers that converted to organic agriculture, all obtained higher net revenues than with their previous practices
   

References

Akbay C and Boz I 2005 Turkey's livestock sector: Production, consumption and policies. Livestock Research for Rural Development 17(09) 2005 http://www.cipav.org.co/lrrd/lrrd17/9/akba17105.htm

Callens I and Tyteca D 1999 Towards indicators of sustainable development for firms: a productive efficiency perspective. Ecological Economics 28 (1): 41-53.

Duzgunes O 1972 Çukurova hayvancılığını gewliştirme imkanları. Ankara Üniversitesi Adana Ziraat Fakültesi Halk Konferansları Serisi yayın No: 21, Turkey.

FAO 2005 Statistical Database, FAOSTAT WEB page, Rome. http://faostat.fao.org/

Farrell A and Hart M 1998 What does sustainability really mean? The search for useful indicators. Environment 40 (9): 4-9.

Karakok G S and Ulubilir M 2005 Süt sığırlarında deri altı implant ve enjeksiyon yolu üremenin kontrolü. HASAD Dergisi 241: 62-66.

Kumlu S, Ozkutuk K and Yeniceri C 1989 Çukurova Bölgesi Entansif Süt Sığırı Yetiştiriciliği. Cukurova Ziraat Dergisi, 4 (6):34-46.

Opschoor H 2000 The ecological footprint: measuring rod or metaphor. Ecological Economics 32(3): 363-365.

Pekel E, OzkutukK and Ozcan N 1986 Sığırlarda yapay tohumlamaya ilişkin ülkesel sorunlar ve öneriler. Batı Akdeniz Bölgesi l. Hayvancılık Semineri. 26-28 Kasım 1986 Antalya, Turkey

Pookpakdi A 1992 Sustainable agriculture for small-scale farmers: a farming systems perspective.  http://www.agnet.org/library/bc/44002/

Tyteca D 1998 Sustainability indicators at the firm level, pollution and resource efficiency as a necessary condition toward sustainability. Journal of Industrial Ecology 2 (4): 61-77.

Veleva V and Ellenbecker M 2001 Indicators of sustainable production: framework and methodology. Journal of Cleaner Production 9 (6): 519-549.

Weil R R 1990 Defining and Using the Concept of sustainable agriculture. Journal Argonomy Education 1(9):126-13.

Yurdakul O, Emeksiz F, Orhan E, Oren N, Gurgen Y, Erkan O, Akdemir S and Ozcatalbas O 1991 Çukurova Tarımının ekonomik yapısı sorunları ve öneriler. Çukurova l. Tarım Kongresi, 9-11 Ocak, 1991, Ç.Ü.Z.F Rektörlük Amfısi, Adana, Turkey