BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 25. Over the past five years, there has been a decline in livestock numbers, yet there has been an increase in meat production and per capita meat consumption, Azerbaijan's Minister of Agriculture, Majnun Mammadov, said at a meeting on agricultural issues chaired by President Ilham Aliyev, Trend reports.
The minister noted that, unfortunately, growing meat production has been unable to meet rising consumption, leading to an increase in meat imports in recent years.
“One of the main challenges facing this sector is productivity. In livestock farming, productivity is currently below the desired level. At the same time, purebred animals account for only 2.5% of the herd. Unfortunately, this prevents us from significantly increasing productivity.
As in the crop production sector, we also see in livestock farming that extensive farms have already exhausted their potential for growth in both milk and meat production. “Over the past five years, the main growth has been driven precisely by intensive farms. However, their number in Azerbaijan today is small, and we need to increase it,” Mammadov noted.
