A Comparison of Scale on Profitability of Dairy Cattle Farms in Eastern Part of Turkey

The main objective of this study, was to determine the profitability of dairy operations in the province of Van (A province in eastern part of Turkey). A total of 117 dairy farmers were interview and data were collected about their operations. Dairy operations were divided into 3 groups based on their size, namely small, mid and large. All of data belongs to year 2007. The average cow per farm was 6.59. The daily milk yield per cow was 5.79 kg, overall, the average lactation period was 281.85 days for farms and yearly milk production per cow was 1630.9 kg. Total assets per farm were $ 16789, gross production value per farm was $ 8824 and per cow was $ 1339. Overall, gross profit per farm was $ 1863.1 and net profit per farm was $ 393 for farms. Overall, profitability rate was 2.2% for farms and increased in proportion to dairy cattle farm size. The total production elasticities of inputs were 0.851 indicating that there were decreasing return to scale for dairy cattle farms.