Consumption pattern of milk and milk products in Ada’a woreda, East Shoa Zone, central Ethiopia

Kassahun Melesse and Fekadu Beyene*

Debre Zeit Agricultural Research Center P.O.Box 32 Debre Zeit, Ethiopia
kasishz@yahoo.com
*Wollega University, Wollega, Ethiopia
fekadu.beyene@yahoo.com

Abstract

A survey was carried out between August and November 2007 by using face to face interview to characterize the consumption pattern of milk and milk products and to identify determinants of consumption in Ada’a woreda. One hundred and thirty five households were selected based on their location and income group.

In the woreda wives had greater responsibility in managing the household budget. The mean monthly income for the overall households was 3553.2± 591.61 Birr. The mean consumer unit in the woreda was 5.04. Locally processed milk products were dominated in the study area; and the consumption of imported milk products was very low. Even if the majority of the households were consuming milk products frequently, it was observed that some households had zero consumption which was particularly severe for pasteurized milk, powdered milk, hard cheese and ice-cream. Average consumption level of dairy products in the woreda was11.2gLME/head/day. In the majority of the studied households especially the medium and low income groups there was a decreasing trend of milk products consumption due to the increasing trend of the price of milk and milk products. Insufficient household income coupled with religion was found to be the predominant constraints in the consumption of dairy products. Consumption level was significantly correlated with household income, consumer unit (family size) education level of the food budget manager(FBM), age of the FBM, location of the household, ownership of dairy cattle, monthly expenditure on dairy products, average daily milk production per household and price of milk products.

Key words: consumer unit, consumption, dairy, household, income group, milk, peri-urban, rural, urban, woreda

Introduction

Milk is said to be the most complete food item because of its great biological value as it contains a variety of nutrients and these nutrients in milk help make it nature’s most nearly perfect food. Improving human nutrition plays an important role to achieve food security. Dairy products have a unique contribution to nutritional status as well as health status of the smallholder household members.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations in the world. According to PRSP (2000) about 47% of Ethiopia's population is living in absolute poverty. There is high infant, child and maternal mortality rates associated with high level of malnutrition. About 51 percent of the population is undernourished and over two million people are considered to be chronically food insecure (FAO 2001).

On the other hand Ethiopia has a huge livestock resource but the country is not self-sufficient in animal products and is a net importer of dairy foods. In the country, the average daily energy intake is estimated to be 1610 kcal/person/year (FAO 1994). In terms of energy sources, vegetable products such as cereals, pulses and root crops account for 93% (1502 kcal) of daily intake with only 7% (109 kcal) coming from animal source foods (Zewdu and Peacock 2003).

The over all milk consumption in Ethiopia is very low, even compared with other least developed African countries. The annual per capita milk consumption was 19–20 litres in 1993/1994 (ILRI 2000) and it has been reduced to 17 litres (Gebrewold et al 1998).

These days there is rapid population growth and urbanization in the country. More over, the income of the urban dwellers is growing. These factors have played an important role to increase the demand for dairy products especially in urban areas. The demand for dairy products depends on consumer preference, consumer’s income, population size, price of the product, price of substitutes and other factors. Increasing population growth, rising real income and decreasing consumer prices are the major factors that are expected to increase the demand for dairy products (Ahmed et al 2004).

Ada’a woreda is known for its high agricultural potential, with great access to market for quality agricultural products, including milk products.  In the woreda there is fast growing dairy production and many households are engaged in dairy production for their income and consumption.  Availability of feed processing plants, veterinary suppliers and also access to market help them to expand their dairy production. The presence of Ada’a Liben Woreda Dairy and Dairy Products Marketing Association is one factor that motivates the dairy producers to be engaged in dairy production. According to Ahmed et al (2004) the amount of milk collected by the association each day had reached 174,360 litres per month in 2002 from 426 members and 181 non-members.

Though the woreda has greater potential for production of dairy products there is limited documented information on consumption pattern (the combination of the types, quantities and frequencies of dairy products consumption) and the constraints associated with the consumption of milk and milk products. The actual levels of consumption of dairy products in the woreda are not known. Therefore, it is vital to generate valuable information for domestic producers, traders and policy-makers regarding the issues mentioned above.

Objectives

The objectives of this study were

• To characterize milk and milk products consumption pattern
• To identify determinants of consumption of milk and milk products

Materials and methods

Study area

The study was conducted in Ada’a Liben woreda which is found about 47 kms south east of Addis Ababa. The altitude of the woreda ranges from 1500m to over 2000m, and the mean annual rainfall, mean min. and mean max. temperatures are 851 mm, 11^oC and 29^oC, respectively. (Addis et al 1998; IPMS 2005).

Sampling procedure

A multi stage simple random sampling procedure was employed to select sample kebeles and households in the study area. The woreda was first stratified into urban, peri-urban and rural areas. Three kebeles from each of the three locations were randomly selected. The households in each selected kebeles were categorized in to three income groups (high, medium and low) based on their monthly income and other wealth indicators. In order to group the households, wealth indicators defined by community leaders and key informants were used. They were being asked to identify indicators of household wealth or well-being and to group neighbouring households according to their relative wealth.  Fifteen households (five from high, five from medium and five from low income group) from each kebele were randomly selected. A total of 135 households were interviewed for this study.

A semi-structured questionnaire was prepared for data collection for both qualitative and quantitative variables. The questionnaire was tested in the pilot area and necessary adjustments were made before commencement of the actual survey.

Data analysis

Since caloric requirements differ according to age and sex of an individual in a given household it was vital to have a uniform measurement of consumers of milk and milk products. For this reason the preferred human unit of measure was the consumer unit (CU). Consumer unit is defined to account for the economy of scale in multi person households. The following conversion factor was used to translate each member of the household into standardized consumer units.

On the other hand milk products were consumed at different frequencies and that this consumption varied over the year. To overcome this problem and examine the level of milk consumption in the studied woreda the total quantities of dairy products consumed had to be expressed into the same form. To do this the following conversion factors were used to express the different dairy products into liquid milk equivalents (LME). The LME of a dairy product is that quantity of whole liquid milk which is required to make the dairy product in question.

The following mathematical model was used during data analysis.

Y_ijkl=µ+W_i+L _j(i)+R _k(ij)+e _{l (ijk)}

Where: 

Y_ijkl= the observed value of a dependent variable

µ= overall mean

W_i= the effect of woreda

L _i(J)= the effect of location nested under woreda

R _k(ij) = the effect of income group nested under woreda and location

e _{l (ijk)} = random error

Descriptive statistics, was employed for qualitative data using Statistical Procedures for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 13.0 (SPSS 2004), for quantitative data the General Linear Model (GLM) of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was employed (SAS 1997). Means with in the same category were separated using the Least Significant Difference (LSD) for those F tests that declared significance (P<0.05). Correlation coefficient (r) was also computed to determine the relationships between consumption level and different household characteristics and among milk contents.

Results and discussion

Food budget manager

Food budget manager (FBM) is a person who manages the household budget and responsible for acquiring food for household. The FBM for different locations in Ada’a woreda is presented in Table 3.

Over all, in the woreda, wives had greater responsibility to manage the household budget (48.9%). In the urban areas wives were more responsible to manage the household budget than the husbands. On the other hand, in the rural areas husbands were the main responsible persons in controlling the household budget. Managing the household food budget was also in the hands of sons and daughters although; their role was insignificant when compared to husbands and wives.0

Household income

Household income for the sampled households is presented in Table 4. Urban high income group households had highest (21333.33 Birr) monthly income and the urban low income groups had the lowest (152.93 Birr). Monthly average household income was significantly different (P<0.001) among the study locations and income groups. In the woreda, average monthly income of urban households (8984.31Birr) was remarkably high compared to that of peri-urban (973.21 Birr) and rural households (702.22 Birr). This might be the opportunity of the urban households to be engaged in different business activities.

Consumer unit (CU)

A very high significant difference (P<0.001) was observed among the three income groups. The high income group households had significantly higher CU (5.94) than the medium and the low ones. This shows the high income groups have household members who should consume more amounts of milk than the medium and low income group households. On the other hand the peri-urban and urban households had higher number of consumer units than the urban counterparts. These might be due to lack of awareness regarding family planning program in the peri-urban and urban areas.

Frequency of consumption

When we examine the frequency of consumption of milk and milk products, it was observed that some households had zero consumption of milk products. The zero consumption was particularly severe for pasteurized milk, powdered milk, butter milk, whey, hard cheese and ice cream. This might be due to the low level of household real income, unavailability, lower quality and higher price of milk and milk products.

Raw milk was the most frequently consumed dairy product in the woreda. Almost 100% of the high and 66.7% of the medium income group households in urban areas consumed raw milk more than 3 to 6 times per week. Because they could afford the price of milk or they produced milk by their own. In addition, 86.6% and 66.6%, respectively of high and medium income group households in peri-urban areas and 73.3% and 66.7%, respectively of high and medium income group households in urban sites consumed raw milk more than 3 to 6 times per week.

However, 6.7% of peri-urban high, 13.3% of rural medium and 33.3% of rural low income group households were never consumed raw milk. This might be due to the higher price of milk and milk products, lower quality of the products and unavailability. On the other hand, the proportion of households that never consume Irgo in urban medium, urban low, peri-urban low, rural medium and rural low income group households were 13.3%, 26.7%, 6.7%, and 20%, respectively.

In the woreda 33.3%, 33.6% and 6.7% of urban low, peri-urban low and rural high income group households had consumed raw milk only on special occasions and/or holidays. Irgo was also consumed only on special occasions by 40%, 6.7% of low income group in urban and peri-urban households, respectively. This could be the low level of this income group houseold’s real income. In the woreda 46.7%, 13.3% and 13.3% of urban, peri-urban and rural low income group households consumed butter only on special occasions.

Almost 93.3%, 73.4% and 53.3% of urban, peri-urban and rural low income group households consumed Ayib only on special occasions because they could not afford the price of Ayib to buy and consume frequently.

In general, locally processed milk products were among the most frequently consumed products in the studied woreda, where as, the frequency of consumption of imported milk products like powdered milk was very low especially in the rural areas where the households could not get these products on the market with fair price.

Consumption level of milk and milk products

According to the present study mean monthly per capita consumption of more customarily consumed milk and milk products in the woreda was 1.47 litres of raw milk, 0.8 litres of Irgo, 0.31 kg of Ayib as well as 0.1 kg of butter. Regarding the less regularly consumed local milk products, butter milk was consumed in quantities of 0.06 litres per capita per month, and hair butter was used in amounts of 0.03 kg per capita per month. Among the imported and/or processed products, pasteurized milk and powdered milk were consumed in quantities of 0.05 litres and 0.07 kg per capita per month, respectively. The consumption level of raw milk and Irgo in the woreda is higher than the level of consumption of these products reported by Ayantu (2006) in Delbo watershed areas of Wolayta, since households in this are usually do not consume raw milk and Irgo rather they churn the fermented milk however, the level of consumption of butter and Ayib is low as compared to the households of Delbo watershed.

In Ada’a, rural high income group families consumed highest amount of milk products (17.7 gLME/head/day) and the lowest (4.9 gLME/head/day) was for urban low income group households. In all cases the high income group families had highest amount of LME than the medium and low income group households. The reason behind this could be the higher monthly income of these households and the associated lower number of consumer units. There were significant difference (P<0.05) in consumption level among the three locations. The difference in consumption level among income groups was highly significant (P<0.001).

The level of milk products consumption in the studied woreda was too low (less than 20g LME per head per day) as compared to earlier reports of 19 litres/head/year (MOA 1997) and 17 litres/head/year (Gebrewold et al 1998). On the other hand, values observed in the present study is far lower compared to that for other countries such as 100kg LME per head per year in Kenya (SDP 2006), 134 kgLME per head per year in Mongolia (Tsetsgee and Dugdill 2006),  22 kg of LME per head per year in Northern Nigeria (Jansen 1992), 45g of LME per head per day in Southern Nigeria (Jabbar and di Domenico 1992), 16g of LME per head per day in urban areas of West Africa, 60g of LME per head per day in rural areas of West Africa (Limpho and Gray 1992). Limpho and Gray (1992) also reported a higher values for Botswana (89.5 litres/head/year), RSA (80.5 litres/head/year), Swaziland (58.2 litres/head/year), Uganda (22.7 litres/head/year), and Lesetho (14.5 litres/head/year).

Monthly expenditure on food items and milk and milk products

The difference in monthly expenditure for milk and milk products was significant among income groups (P<0.001) with in locations. It could be said that monthly expenditure increased as the household real income increased and the high income group households had higher monthly expenditure on milk and milk products.

Monthly expenditure on food items and milk and milk products for the households in Ada’a woreda by location and income group is presented in Table 8. The monthly share of milk and milk products from the total monthly expenditure on food items for the high, medium and low income group households were 13.18%, 19.51%, and 9.89%, respectively. Similar observations were reported by Jabbar and di Domenico (1992) as well as Vabi and Tambi (1995) where they indicated high income group households spent more money on milk and milk products compared to medium and low income group households in Southern Nigeria and Cameroon. Generally, almost 10% and more of the household food budget was spent on milk and milk products. This shows the higher price of milk and milk products in the woreda. Monthly expenditure for milk and milk products in the present study was higher than the reports of other authors in other countries such as 10% in Northern Nigeria (Jansen 1992) and 1.4% in China (Zhang et al 2002). The present findings were almost consistent with the observations of SDP (2006) for Kenyans who reported that average expenditure on milk and milk products amounted to 18% of the household budget.

Determinants of consumption

Relation ship (r) between consumption level of milk and milk products and income group, educational level of Food budget Manager (FBM), family size, consumer unit, location of the household, age of FBM, amount of milk production per household, ownership of dairy cattle, monthly expenditure for milk and milk products and price of raw milk is presented in table 9. Monthly expenditure for milk and milk products was highly positively correlated (r=0.28) with monthly LME consumption per head.

Educational level of FBM was also highly positively correlated (r=0.29) with consumption level. A positive correlation was observed between household income and level of consumption (r=0.09).  This finding was in agreement with the report of Jansen (1992), Vabi and Tambi (1995), Fritsche (1996), Zhang et al (2002) and Zhou et al (2002) where they reported that as income increases the consumption of milk and milk products and/or other protein rich foods increases. SDP (2006) was also reported that milk consumption in Kenya was increased with income. Consumer unit (r=-0.41) was highly negatively correlated with consumption level. This means as CU increases in a given household level of consumption of milk and milk products decreases. On the other hand, ownership of dairy cattle (r=0.12) was positively correlated with consumption level. A similar relationship was reported in Kenya where dairy cow ownership could increase consumption of dairy products by 1.0 litre per week (Nicholson et al 2004).

Price of raw milk was found to be negatively correlated (r=-0.08) with consumption level. This indicates that as the price of milk increases consumption of milk and milk products will decrease. Household location was found to affect consumption of milk products by influencing the availability of milk products. Household location was positively correlated (r=0.02) with consumption level. This could mean as the level of urbanization increases milk and milk products consumption will increase. Similarly Jansen (1992) reported that location of the household had impact on the consumption of milk and milk products. However, income was appeared to be more important than household location as determinant of milk products consumption.

Similarly income, location of the household, price of milk, were also mentioned as determinants of milk products consumption by several authors (Jansen 1992; Jabbar and di Domenico 1992; Limpho and Gary 1992; Mullins et al 1994; Zhang et al 2002; Robb et al 2007).

Conclusion and recommendation  

• Wives were found to be the most responsible family members in managing the household food budget in the urban areas. This does mean traditional thinking of undermining women in managing the household budget still persists in peri-urban and rural areas.

  
  

• Although the majority of the households consumed milk products regularly, it was observed that some households had zero consumption. This zero consumption in most cases was related to insufficient household income. Therefore, there should be a mechanism to increase the household real income through decreasing the price of milk and milk products or their substitutes.

  
  

• The consumption level of milk and milk products in the studied woreda was too low (only 11.2gLME/head/day) even when compared to other African countries. This was also solely due to insufficient household income to purchase and consume milk products as well as unavailability of the products. Low levels of milk and milk products consumption among the majority of the households and the high incidence of income and availability constraints indicate that even small changes in these areas would result in significant improvement in consumption of milk and milk products. Therefore, the government has to develop market infrastructures such as road to make the milk products easily accessible. On the other hand, the government should reconsider the tax imposed on imported milk products and decrease as much as possible so that medium and especially low income group households will be able to purchase and consume the products.

  
  

• Almost 10% and more of the household food budget were spent on milk and milk products. This showed the high price of milk and milk products in the studied woreda. As indicated above the price of milk products should be reduced through reducing the tax and other possible mechanisms. It could be observed that consumption gets increase in high income groups. In this regard it could be concluded that consumers are very sensitive about the price of these products. Therefore, the government policy has to make an effort to reduce the price of milk that is very essential in human nutrition.

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Received 25 December 2008; Accepted 24 March 2009; Published 18 April 2009

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