Economic and Nutrition Impacts of Communal Cowshed Dairy Cattle Farming System in Zanzibar, Tanzania

Abstract

The dairy industry is among the important components of the livestock sector in Zanzibar in terms source of animal protein, income and employment. In Zanzibar, lack of grazing land, inadequate spaces for waste management and urbanization created a need to find a better way of establishing dairy farming intervention to serve poor families within townships. Introduction of communal cowshed farming system was is expected to increase milk production and productivity and waste management through group based production and marketing model because of reduced transactions costs and increased economies of scale which in turn will improve income and family nutrition. A farm level economic and nutrition simulation model (FARMSIM) was used to evaluate the economic and nutrition impacts of the communal cowshed farming system relative to sole dairy farming system. Results show that the annual average profit under communal cowshed farming system was greater that sole based system across both islands. The nutrition results show that both the sole dairy farming households and communal cowshed scenarios did not meet the minimum daily requirements for calories, proteins, iron, and vitamin A but were insufficient for calcium and fat. However, sole farmers were better off in term of quantity of food intake in both islands. More over Unguja Island was found to be better off in terms of economic indicators while Pemba island farmers were relatively better off in terms of food intake status across both farming system. from the discussions it is concluded that communal cowshed farming system has enlighten farmers into business farming orientation but resulted into decreased milk intake. It is recommended, for any intervention must be integrated kind of intervention to consider both economic and nutrition improvement.