Economic Analysis Of Small-Scale Poultry Production In Dodoma Region: A Case Of Chawakubodo Cooperative Society

ABSTRACT

Agriculture is one of the major economic activities in Tanzania. The sector links crops cultivation, forest, fishing and livestock production. Livestock contributes seven percent of the total Gross Domestic Product and poultry production contributes 1.8% only. Poultry farming present an interested case and continue to play an important role in the context of food demand resulted by high population and mounting land constraint. On the other hand, Poultry sector is still underutilized; the government identified various challenges facing the sector and revealed some measures which have been taken in order to curb the prevailing obstacles. However, the sector in large extent remains subsistence consumption and most of farmers produce traditionally which made the sector to remain in small-scale system. The main objective of this study was to find out the economic analysis in terms of costs and return of small-scale poultry production in CHAWAKUBODO cooperative society in Dodoma city. Cross-sectional design was used with sample size of 200 of small-scale producers who were members of CHAWAKUBODO. Descriptive Grossmargin and Pearson`s correlation analysis were used for data analysis. The study found that most of the farmers (66.92%) were women with average age of 46.45 who spent 6.83 years in poultry farming and they have primary education level (57.14%). On average family size were seven members and average flock size of 611 stocks of birds with minimum 109 and maximum 2500 number of birds. Gross-Margin analysis showed that all farmers gained profit on average1586065 Tanzania shillings range from minimum of 180000Tanzania shillings to the maximum of 576000Tanzania shillings. Also the interaction between social and economic factors is important to the production since it has various influence levels in profit. Also, multiple response shown costs of feed and outbreak of diseases were the major constraints facing poultry production in study area. One of the key observations related to the study at hand is that poultry production is profitable among small-scale farmers. Hence, there is the need to support these sectors especially by the government toward the growth of the poultry sector notably through financial institutions, external services such as veterinary services, control of quality of drags and vaccination services. vi TABLE OF