A Comparison of Profitability and Economic Efficiencies Between Native and Culture-Breed Cattle Fattening Farms in Eastern Part of Turkey

Abstract

In this study the comparison of profitability and economic efficiency of native- breed and culture-breed fattening farms was aimed. The data belong to 1999 production period and was collected from 35 native-breed and 18 culture-breed-fattening farms in Center town of Van province, Turkey using strafed random sampling method. The average number of cattle, fattening period, live weight gain per cattle per fattening period and daily weight gain per cattle was 33.11, 168 days, 118.37 kg and 710.60 g, respectively for native-breed cattle fattening farms. The same figures were considerably higher for culture-breed fattening farms with 43.67, 186.67 days, 184.70 kg and 993.57 g, respectively. The economical and financial profitability rates were 31.25 and 31.53% and 35.73 and 36.18% for native-breed and culture-breed fattening farms, respectively. The cost of 1 kg of live weight gain was calculated as $ 4.96 for native-breed compared to $ 3.73 for culture-breed fattening farms. The total production elasticity of inputs was 0.7988 and 1.606, respectively for native-breed and culture-breed cattle fattening farms, which means there exist decreasing return to scale for native-breed and increasing return to scale for culture- breed cattle fattening farms. © 2006 Asian Network for Scientific Information.