Tanzania: Win-win for dairy production in East Africa

Published Apr 17, 2023

Tridge summary

A study led by Lancaster University, published in Nature Food, has proposed a solution to address poverty, improve milk production, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Tanzania by introducing high yield dairy cattle breeds and improving feed quality. With a poorly developed dairy sector and heavy reliance on imports, this strategy could potentially satisfy two key government policy goals: achieving milk self-sufficiency and reducing GHG emissions by one-third. The research, which involves modeling various scenarios, anticipates a decrease in the need for land use change and a reduction in forest clearance, contributing to a greener planet. However, it also highlights the need for support policies to prevent potential income drops for farmers who cannot afford to invest in higher yielding cattle.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

Adopting high yield dairy cattle breeds and improving feed would allow Tanzania to increase milk production, while reducing planet warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and alleviating poverty, a new study reveals. Tanzania has the second largest dairy herd in East Africa with 28 million cows. However, its dairy sector is poorly developed with mainly small-scale farms stocked with low-yielding breeds, using poor quality feeds. This, along with other supply chain problems around handling and refrigeration, results in poor productivity and the need to import processed dairy products leading to a $23 million trade deficit. A new research paper from an international team of researchers led by Lancaster University scientists and published in Nature Food is the first to find evidence that breeding higher yielding dairy cattle offers significant potential to help Tanzania to reduce its dependency on foreign food imports and at the same time help meet its climate commitments. The ...

Source: The Cattle Site