Eureka! Institutional Repository

Cattle breeding in Greece is one of the most important sectors of Greek livestock farming, employing a significant number of people in this sector. It contributes significantly to the development of the primary sector, creates jobs and also a satisfactory income for a large number of livestock farmers. Also, with the processing and marketing of the products, it contributes to the creation of added value and finally produces products of high biological and dietary value. The purpose of this work is to investigate the factors that influence the cost of milk production in the area of the Prefecture of Thessaloniki. For the needs of the research, zootechnical economic data of 40 cattle breeding farms were used. The data used in the research were collected during the period 2016-2017 by the method of personal and telephone interviews from the heads of the farms in order to fill in an appropriately structured questionnaire. The SPSS 13 statistical program was used for the statistical analysis of the data obtained. The results of our research showed that the largest percentage of breeders are young people with the main profession of livestock breeder and a stable income from it. Most of the units are family businesses, but finding a workforce is imperative due to the heavy workload. In addition to the work done in the units, the mechanical work is important where it includes the work related to nutrition which is done mainly by the owners. As it emerged from this research, the biggest influence in determining the cost of milk is foreign labor remuneration, depreciation, family labor remuneration, the value of livestock and the cost of medicine and care. Also, the costs of purchased animal feed are high and determine the cost of milk production. The effort to produce selfproduced animal feed is worthwhile, but it is not enough to reduce production costs.