FEED EFFICIENCY OF URBAN AND PERI-URBAN DAIRY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

The study aimed at estimating feed efficiency of milk production systems in Urban and Peri-urban areas in three main provinces in Egypt. The targeted provinces were: Cairo, Giza and Qaloubeya. A questionnaire has been developed to cover the variables related to the production systems. The total number of interviewers was 72, included the districts: Manshiat Elbakary; Saft Elaban and Shalaquan as peri-urban, and Elmarg; Elomrania and Dar Elsalam as urban areas. As a result of the great significant in the selected samples, a typology has processed gathering similarities in two main groups of producers: land-access and landless producers. Three crop-livestock systems have been classified due to the concepts: land capacity and herd size (group 1, 2 and 3). Dairy systems have been identified as two main urban dairy specialized systems (group 4 and 5) oriented to dairy activities. In order to measure feed efficiency for each system were represented in the groups, the most significant obtained results were: the small and the micro crop-livestock producers related land-access producers (group 2 and 3) which have small herd appear to be more efficient in valorizing feed in relation to milk production per head per year, and as well as milk production per feddan allocated to fodder crops. On contrary, the landless producers (group 4 and 5) have the lowest feed efficiency due to the amount of concentrates included in their feed strategy (intensive feeding system) and inability to produce fodders.             The large mixed crop-livestock system (group 1) represents an intermediate status that producers cultivate fodders inside farm, but remain low economic efficiency in terms of their intensive feed strategy. The results of the study indicated that the small and the micro crop-livestock (group 2 and 3) achieved the highest feed efficiency regarding milk production in Urban and Peri-urban areas and thus the importance of improving productive performance by creating supposed scenarios or technical packages using simulation systems. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and extension programs are essential in performing records and marketing which help to raise product price as well as producers` income and the Gross Domestic Products (GDP).