Abstract:
The demand for animal products is projected to increase progressively due to extensive urbanization, rapid growth of human population and income dynamics. Despite the potential expansion of beef and dairy production, dairy goat production as an option for enhancing food security and income generation in Kenya is likely to benefit from this prospect. Essentially, goat milk is nutritionally superior to the cow milk. Although the importance of goat milk is empirically known, its valuation from the potential consumers’ point of view, together with the associated price performance, is not well known. The purpose of the current study was to assess consumption and willingness to pay for dairy goat milk. Multistage sampling was used to obtain 131 consumers at households. Primary data was collected using a structured interview schedule. Data collected was on household consumer characteristics, responses to different bid levels for goat milk and socio-economic factors. The study used double-bounded dichotomous choice CVM to assess consumers’ mean WTP for goat milk and logit model to determine socio-economic factors influencing consumers’ WTP. Results indicated that consumers were willing to pay an average premium of 38% above the current prevailing price of cow milk. Age, number of years in schooling and number of children (18 years of age and below) present in a household had a positive and significant effect on WTP. Awareness, gender and the number of adults aged between 19 and 59 years present in a household negatively influenced WTP. The study recommends policy intervention aimed at facilitating development of marketing infrastructure, creation of awareness of important nutritional and health benefits of goat milk, and boosting the development of goat milk dairy processing plants and systems that can add value to goat milk, so as to capture existing market opportunities. This would enhance food security and income generation of the small-scale resource-constrained farmers
