MSc thesis proposal presentation

1. Preventive and Failure Costs of
Mastitis on South African Dairy Farms
22 oktober 2015
Leen Leenaerts
MSc Management, Economics and Consumer Studies
Wageningen University
Supervisor : Henk Hogeveen

2. • Background
• Objective
• Research Questions
• Methodology
• Results
• Q & A

3. Background - Mastitis
• Most prevalent production disease
• Impact :
• Animal welfare
• Environment
• Economic
• Earlier research
• consequences of mastitis
• US, Europe

4. Background – Mastitis Costs
• TC = PC + FC
Failure costs/
cowyear
Preventive costs/
cowyear

5. Background – South Africa
South African dairy industry
• Commercialised
• High competition
Estimations of mastitis costs
• Necessary for dairy farmer
• Non-existent

6. Objective
• Gaining further insight in the FC-PC
relationship of mastitis on South African dairy
farms to help them make the right mastitis
prevention and treatment decisions.

7. Research Questions
• Incidence rate of Mastitis in SA?
• Average PC and FC costs?
• Which prevention measures are taken in SA?
• Which prevention measures should be taken?

8. Methodology
Questionnaire sent to 1700 MPO farmers
• 3 parts
• General
• Cow factors
• Environment
• Pretesting
• Verification

9. Results
• Preventive measures that should be taken?
Multiple Regression Analysis
• E.g. milkers gloves (Yes: X1 = 1, No: X1 = 0)
– PC = … + yearly cost of gloves * X1
– FC = cte - … - reduction in FC * X1
– TC = cte + … + (X1* yearly cost of gloves – reduction in FC )
• TC = Cte + (𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 − 𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝐹𝐶 𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ∗ 𝑋𝑖 )+ e
• Prevention Efficiencies of SA dairy farms – DEA
• FC-PC frontier

10. Results – Efficiency of farms (DEA)
Failure costs/
cowyear
Preventive costs/
cowyear
A
B
C D
𝐴𝐵
𝐴𝐷
=
𝐴𝐶
𝐴𝐷
∗
𝐴𝐵
𝐴𝐶
Overall
Efficiency
Technical
Efficiency
Allocative
Efficiency

11. Questions?