Kruglyak O.
Cand. of econ. sciences, senior research fellow, doctoral student, department of
regional development economics and forecasting, NSC "Institute of agrarian
economy", Kyiv, Ukraine
DAIRY CATTLE-BREEDING IN UKRAINE: CURRENT STATE AND
PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT
Introduction. Dairy cattle breeding is one of the most important and promising
sectors of world livestock breeding. According to FAO (the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations) statistics, the share of cow's milk production in
the global milk production structure is 82.7% [1]. There are about 133 million farms in
the world, where there are more than 264 million dairy cows producing more than 650
million tons of milk each year [2, 3]. According to the International Dairy Federation
(IDF), the largest cow's milk is produced in the Asian region - 29% of the world's total,
28 European countries - 24, countries of North and Central America - 18, South
America - 10%. The share of dairy production in other countries of Europe, Africa and
Oceania is 9; 5; 5% respectively [3].
According to Dairy Campus scientists' researches at the University of
Wageningen (the Netherlands), the demand for milk and dairy products in the world
by 2050 will increase 1.5 times - to 1077 billion kg. Additional volumes will be
produced and consumed, mainly in developing countries. So, there were countries on
the market, milk production growth rates in which over the past 15 years exceeded
world figures. Among them - India and Pakistan (production leaders in the informal
segment), Russia (plans to satisfy their own needs for milk in 5-10 years), China
(invests not only in its own production, but also in the dairy business of Russia,
Australia, New Zealand), Belarus, Uzbekistan (an increase in the production of raw
milk by 2.5 times in 15 years), Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey,
Iran [4, p. 2].
Given the growth of the world dairy market (in July 2017, the world's milk price
index was $ 38.9 per 1 pc of milk, which is 55% higher than the previous year and
1.3% higher than a month ago [5]), in Ukrainian business there is a renewed interest in
dairy cattle breeding.
At the present stage, the development of dairy farming needs to focus on
increasing the livestock population with high productive indicators in the large-scale
sector. In the period from 2000 to 2016, the number of cows in Ukraine decreased by
2.4 times (from 4958.3 thousand heads on 01.01.2001 to 2108.9 thousand heads on
01.01.2017), and in agricultural enterprises - by 3.8 times (from 1851.0 to 484.6
thousand heads respectively). An important factor in the growth of the large-scale
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