The role of dairy cooperatives

This study was undertaken to explore the role of dairy cooperatives in stimulating innovation and market oriented smallholders¿ development by taking Adäa dairy cooperative as a case study. It entails the specific objectives of investigating the role of the cooperative in promoting innovation, promoting linkages for access to services and marketing and enhancing knowledge and information sharing. Primary data was collected from 150 smallholder dairy producer members of the cooperative randomly selected with Probability Proportionate to Size (PPS) using sampling frame from both urban and peri-urban members of the cooperative. This was supplemented by information from focal group discussion with dairy producers, board members of the cooperative and key informants. Qualitative and quantitative methods were deployed to analyze the collected data.