Effects of the economic crisis on sheep farming systems: A case study from the north Evros region, Greece
2012
T., Manousidis | Z., Abas | A., Ragkos | E.M., Abraham | Z.M., Parissi | A.P., Kyriazopoulos
Extensive and semi-extensive sheep farming constitute the traditional farming systems in the Mediterranean region. These systems are predominantly labor-intensive with relatively low capital requirements, where an essential part of the animal feeding requirements are based on grazing in natural rangelands. The increased market demand for sheep milk and modernization in life-styles has recently resulted in an increase in the intensive sheep farming. The sheep are fed indoors only on purchased or harvested forages produced on-farm and concentrates. Therefore, fixed and variable costs of this system are high. Moreover, the semi-intensive sheep farming system is characterized by grazing in artificial pastures, which reduces the feeding cost. The purpose of this paper is to study the sustainability of the above three sheep farming systems. Technical and economic data from a sample of sheep farms in the north Evros region of Greece were collected in 2011 and analyzed in order to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of each system. The results provide strong evidence that the intensive system has been more adversely affected by the current economic crisis and it is more vulnerable to the potential negative effect of continued volatility of the economy than the semi-extensive ones. This is because the intensive system requires higher variable costs of purchasing harvested forage and concentrates. Although the semiintensive system exhibits high variable costs, its feeding costs were significantly lower than the intensive.
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