Pork Supply, Marketing and Challenges in Ethiopia

AbstractThe study was conducted to characterize pork and pork products marketing and challenges in Ethiopia. Multistage random sampling procedure was applied to select a total of 40 pork retailers from six towns. Structured questionnaire was used to collect information through face to face interview. Pork retailers were clustered into three categories as small scale (sell <5kg pork per day), medium scale (sell 5-10kg pork per day) and large scale (sell >10kg pork per day) based on quantities of pork selling per day. Collected data were analyzed using appropriate statistical procedures of SAS and SPSS software packages. The result showed that the quantity of pork products sold per day was too small. About 61.5, 15.4 and 23.1% of pork retailers were selling <5, 5-10 and >1 kg of pork products per day in small, medium and large scale retailers, respectively. In most cases, pork was sold in the form of mortadella, sausage and salami. In addition to pork  selling, almost all of the pork retailers were selling one or more other meat types such as beef, mutton, goat meat, fish and chicken. About 92.3% of the pork retailers were selling both beef and chicken meat, and 79.5, 48.7 and 10.3% of them were selling fish, mutton, and goat meat, respectively. The average price (followed by SE) of a kilo gram of pork was 162(6.3), 164(4.0) and 172(6.0) Ethiopian Birr (ranging 7.5 to 8 USD per kg of pork) in small, medium and large scale pork retailers, respectively. The presence of few pork consumers, lack of formal central markets and public complain against pork consumption were the major challenges observed in pig and pork marketing value chain. In concussion, the findings of this study will improve awareness on existing pork marketing systems in Ethiopia and provide valuable information that can support future interventions aiming to solve key challenges in the market value chain.