Climate changes and comparative advantage of livestock sector in Egypt

Abstract EN

The Egyptian livestock sector enjoys comparative advantages in producing broiler meat, egg, fish and milk production.

But, in the case of Fattened calves, the native cattle and buffalo production systems do not enjoy comparative advantages.

In producing red meat .This is because of high input cost in terms of purchased young stock (cattle) and imported feed ingredients.

In the case of dairy cows, exotic cow enjoys the highest comparative advantage in producing milk among the dairy cows, because of the high yield of milk per cow.

The native dairy cow in traditional system has comparative advantage because the non - milk returns represents 45 % of the total returns and the cheap forages are the main source of the nutrition.

For layer and broiler, large scale production systems have more comparative advantages than the small ones.

The most competitive systems is the large scale production system of layer and exotic dairy cow which yield DRC equals to 0.23 and 0.25, respectively.

This is due mainly to fact that the average border price of egg and milk is almost double the local one .The fish production in Ponds enjoys quite high comparative advantage .The high fish production rate and the improved feed conversion rate are main reasons beyond this phenomenon.

By applying sensitivity analysis the study found - under the first scenario (increase energy costs) - the livestock and poultry products, except cattle meat and poultry meat from small scale production systems, enjoy comparative advantages.

Under the second scenario (increase feed cost), the livestock and Poultry products, except buffalo and native cattle meat production, enjoy comparative advantages.

Finally under the third scenario (improve Productivity) the livestock and Poultry products, except beef production from fattened head ( native and buffalo) enjoy comparative advantages.