New approaches to assessing the efficiency of milk production enterprises

The main problem of dairy cattle industry accelerated development is its low profitability, so the research on milk production effectiveness is relevant both in the national and regional aspects, and at the level of a specific enterprise. The purpose of the research was to develop new approaches to assessing the efficiency of dairy cattle breeding, in particular, the method of rating agricultural enterprises on the efficiency of milk production. The method was tested at the agricultural enterprises of the Vologda Oblast. The research examined the current state and development dynamics of the dairy cattle industry in the Vologda Oblast, which showed an increase in gross milk yield in agricultural organizations in the region in 2019 up to 526.2 thousand tons of milk with an average annual milk yield of 7568 kg per cow. Profitability analysis of the region’s agricultural organizations showed a reduction in the level of profitability of milk production from 30.3% in 2017, to 17.9% in 2019, due to the outpacing the rate of production cost growth relative to the growth rates of milk sales. The authors established a negative dependence of the profitability level on cows’ productivity, which means lower efficiency of milk production after reaching a certain level of the average yield (threshold is 8500 kg). The application of the developed scoring method showed that the top twenty enterprises of the Vologda Oblast included farms with rather high indicators of livestock and cow productivity, the price of milk sales, and the level of profitability. At the same time, in the top of the rating there were enterprises with the indicators below the average region-wise, but characterized by greater efficiency in the use of labor and land resources. The theoretical and practical significance of the research is determined by the ability to solve the issues related to the evaluation of performance indicators in dairy farming, in identifying and replicating the experience of successful milk production.