Assessment the stability of rural small-scale dairy farms in the Zanjan province

In Iran, more than 96.4 percent of dairy farms (including more than 68.7 percent of cattle and calf) have a less than 20 heads of animals, and they produce more than two-thirds of milk and most of animal protein. Also, large shares of water, land and labor force resources are used by this production section. Less scientific studies have been focused on this production system despite it's major contribution. The main question is whether the rural dairy farms with traditional production system have a suitable efficiency, and whether they could pass economic and political transformation, survive and continue production? In this study, structure of representative rural dairy farm was defined. Accordingly, representative farm on average contains 6.05 heads in the stalls area of 201.16 m2. Through estimated the social cost of inputs and products, indicators of Domestic Resource Cost, DRC, Social Cost-Benefit, SCB, and Net Social Profit, NSP, had been calculated 1.85, 1.086, and 19, 425, 790 IRR per year, respectively, which indicate the lack of comparative advantage of this production system. Analysis of the results revealed that the small scale of the activities that cause excessive use of non-tradable inputs per unit livestock, as well as low production of each livestock per inputs used, are the main reasons of lack of comparative advantage of this production system in Zanjan Province.