Dairy industry

Milk producing farms are mostly concentrated in the Central and in North-Western part of Ukraine, and dairy plants tend to follow the same pattern. According to the official statistics, in 2007 Ukraine had about 600 dairy plants and approximately 3,700 milk producing agricultural enterprises.. However, these farms produced less than 20% of the national volume of raw milk.

The rapid decrease of the number of cows in Ukraine, and the restructuring in the livestock production sector, which has been taken place for the last 17 years, have objective reasons. While large agricultural farms (former collective agricultural enterprises) were trying to get rid of losses-generating low-profit activities; rural residents were growing relatively stable levels of dairy livestock, with the purpose of having additional means for a living. As a result, the major numbers of cows are grown within so called "individual subsidiary households". These individual households and small family farms currently are important suppliers of dairy and meat products to local population and to the processing industry.

Across the Ukrainian regions most the significant numbers of cows are concentrated at agricultural enterprises in Central and North-Eastern Ukraine with such regions as Poltava, Chernigiv, Kyiv, Cherkassy taking the lead. Thus, in central regions, the north and north-east the livestock production is specialized in breeding cattle mostly for dairy purposes and meat as a secondary product. The population of cows has decreased over the last two years by 17,7%. For the last two years, this decline of dairy livestock was observed in all Ukrainian oblasts, excepted
Chernigiv.

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Market survey of Ukrainian dairy sector

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Dairy industry of Ukraine

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