Factors Influencing Beef Cattle Sales in the Pastoral Communities of Western and Central

Uganda

Presented by 1Ruhangawebare Godfrey, 1*Mpairwe Denis, 1Bashaasha Bernard, 1Mutetikka David and 2Jorgen Madsen for the 5th All Africa Conference on Animal Agriculture and the 18th Annual Meeting of the Ethiopian Society of Animal Production (ESAP), Addis Ababa,

October 25-28, 2010

Background

Livestock contributes 9% of Gross Domestic Product and 17% of Agricultural Gross Domestic Product of Uganda

90% of national cattle herd is raised in traditional pastoral and mixed smallholder crop-livestock farming systems.

Produce 85% of the milk and 95% of the beef consumed in the country

Problem Statement

•Despite Government’s policy to commercialize agriculture through market liberalisation,

•Marketed livestock output is still low (12%) contributing to meat deficit 41.2 kg/head

•Survival strategy of risk minimization rather than maximizing off take per animal

• Most Patoralists hold onto their animals instead of responding to demand; sell when cash constrained

•Offered low prices yielding low income levels

Methodology

•The study was conducted to establish the factors affecting the cattle sales rates of the pastoral livestock keepers

•It was done in four districts covering the Western and Central regions of the cattle corridor

•Statistical analysis to estimate the socio-economic characteristics was executed in SPSS

•A Tobit model was used to determine the factors affecting the livestock keepers’ sales rate

Socio- economic Characteristics•The average years of formal education were 8 years(p< 0.1) and an average household size of 10 members

• Average owned grazing land size was 151.7 hectares and significantly (p<0.01) reduced the farmers’ sales rate

•Indigenous cattle breeds (51%) were the most owned followed by crossbreeds (45%) and exotic breeds (1%)

• Reproductive female cows (50.4%) dominated herds followed by heifers (24.3%), calves and mature bulls (Fig.1)

Results continued• 96% of the respondents had participated in livestock marketing indicating that pastoralists in Uganda sale their cattle

•Cattle sales were mostly cows (38.1%), weaner bulls (36.2%), heifers (12.5%), steers (8.7%), bulls (3.9%) and weaner heifers (6.6%)

•Little importance was attached to keeping cattle for commercial purposes (33.1%) compared to providing household insurance (78.9%) (Table 1)

•Cattle were sold mostly to finance both the expected and unexpected expenses such as school fees and household needs

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• Pastoralist used market more to sell than buy - are net sellers Restock from births than purchases

• Abattoir dealers formed the major outlet - they were source of information to farmers, offered higher prices and over the years had built a close relationship the with farmers

• Local markets were second - offered fair prices due to relatively many traders thus minimizing collusion amongst themselves

• Fellow farmers bought animals with desired traits for breeding; thus offered better prices than local butchers – expecting some help in future in case of emergency (Fig.2)

Cattle Marketing Outlets

Factors affecting Cattle Sales rates• The sales rate of 17.6% was recorded which is close to 18% reported in other grassland cattle production systems

•Low and fluctuating cattle prices (p<0.05), quarantine, limited number of traders, inaccessibility to market information (p< 0.05) and poor roads (p<0.05) were the major livestock marketing constraints (Tables 2 and 3)

•The four constraints were interlinked and influenced each other

Conclusion and Recommendation• Pastoral livestock keepers sold their cattle to finance immediate cash needs

•Provision of sufficient market information enables them to make informed decisions.

•Government should increase acceptable investment alternatives to cattle and initiate well functioning information systems accessible to the widely dispersed producer populations

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Acknowledgements

DANIDA through IGMAFU project

African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)

Makerere University

THANK YOU

(Table 1) 1. Purposes for Keeping Cattle by PastoralistsCattle Purpose N= 180

Strongly Agree (%)

Agree (%)

Disagree (%)

Strongly Disagree (%)

Prestige 25 53.3 16 5.6

Way of Life 42.7 53.3 4.4 00

Store of Wealth 66.3 30.0 2.8 1.1

Security/insurance 78.9 21.1 00 00

Food 50.2 47.8 2.0 00

Source of Income 44.6 48.3 7.1 00

Commercial Purposes

33.1 16.2 26.7 23.9

Table 2. Major Cattle Marketing Constraints

Constraint Rank ( Mean)1

Low and fluctuating prices 1 (1.6)

Quarantine 2 (1.96)

Limited Cattle traders 4 (4.9)

Inaccessibility to market information 6 (6.8)

Poor roads 7 (6.9)

’s Coefficient (W)2 0.75***

1 The lower the rank, the greater the importance of the constraint.2 W ranges from 0 (* no agreement) to 1 complete agreement and the higher its value the higher is the level of agreement between groups.*** P ≤ 0.001

Table 3. Tobit model Estimates for Factors affecting Livestock keepers’ Sales rates

Explanatory variable Coefficient Standard Error P Value

Sex 0.85559 0.3283 0.013**

Household size 0.00532 0.01701 0.756

Education level -0.04994 0.27677 0.082*

Grazing Area owned -0.05014 0.01617 0.004***

Alternative source of income -0.36418 0.19731 0.073*

Distance to nearest market 0.16555 0.08382 0.056*

Farming organization -0.18194 0.19322 0.353

Cattle Prices 0.11407 0.04986 0.035**

Road condition -0.17608 0.07360 0.022**

Access to Market information 0.11398 0.04897 0.026**

Total value of milk sold 0.00003 0.00001 0.021**

Constant -1.32666 0.5884 0.131

Pseudo R2 0.2590 ; *** 1 %, ** 5% * 10% level of significance