Marketing Structure, Problems and Suggestions of Small Ruminant Production in Çamardı District of Niğde Province

Abstract

In Turkey, there are 31.1 million head sheep in 2014. Central Anatolia Region has 8.3% of this total number. Nigde is the most important sheep producer province in this region. In this study it is aimed to determine marketing structure of products obtained from sheep production activities, define problems of it and present solutions for these problems. The main material of the research was consisted of primary data obtained from 39 Akkaraman sheep producers in Çamardı district in Nigde. In the sheep farms, milk production yield was 1374.4 kg per year. As 73.5% of this yield was presented to market, rest of it was used for self-consumption. Milk was generally sold to local traders. In the operations, livestock also was sold. When 89.7% of livestock sold to kasaps 10.3% of it was sold to local traders. It can be said that producers who are the members of cooperatives were very low and 51.3% of the producers stated that cooperatives can be useful for the solutions of marketing problems of sheep products. Main expectations of producers from cooperatives were providing them market alternative, providing easiness for processing of products and leading to increasing numbers and kinds of buyers in the market.