Economic Assesment of Small Ruminant Farms in Gap Region of Turkey

The aim of this study was to conduct an economic analysis and determine sustainability of sheep and goat farms in the Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP) region of Turkey. The GAP covers 9 provinces in Southeastern of Turkey and it is an integrated socioeconomic development project of the region. One of the goal of the project is to boost the agricultural production potential of Turkey not only in terms of crop production but also animal production so as to contribute to the socioeconomic development of the region. The bulk of the data used to achieve the aims was collected from 251 farms distributed into 3 separate size groups, which were selected from farms in the research area by stratified sampling method. In the research area, it was determined that the share of milk value was 30.7% in sheep and 55.7% in goat breeding. The share of plant production value was 43.3% and animal production value was 55.7% in Gross Production Value (GPV). The biggest share was from sheep breeding (39.9%) into GPV. The percentage of agricultural income was 96.3% and non-agricultural income was 3.7% in the total household income in the studied farms.