تقدير وتحليل دالة استجابة مساحة البرسيم في مصر

This study delt with assessment and analysis of response function for berseem area in Egypt during the period (1975-2014). The study applied the Nalove model. Berseem (Egyptian Colver) is the main feed source for livestock in Egypt. However it competes with wheat crop, the main food item in Egyptian diet, on agricultural land in winter lug in Egypt. The study concluded from analyzing the supply response of the annual Egyptian clover area that the most important factor in determining such area is the number of milking heads per farm holding, and the buffalo milk price. This result confirms what previous studies have highlighted. Such studies, cited that the Egyptian farmer is keen on holding at least one dairy cow to enable him to earn finance for his daily expenses and it is preferably to be a milking buffalo, even if he does not hold a farm area. He (She) does that to keep on acquisition of the social status in addition to get daily liquidity and reimbursement obligations of fixed expenses, such as rent of his agricultural land. The daily income is generated from selling milk and selling the weaned calves. A recent study has confirmed these trends, where it founded that farm income from animal production is the economic activity which, crosses the small holder farms of less than five feddan (92% of the farm holders in Egypt) the absolute poverty line – 1-$ per capita a day, while crossing the poverty line of $ 2 a day is reached via the extra income from the household earnings from working outside the agricultural sector. Although estimates of the supply elasticity coefficients in either short or long run showed that the net return from one acre of wheat reduces the area of berseem at a rate much higher than the expected increase in the price of raw milk, and although the growth rate in the price of buffalo milk at the farm gate was less than that of the rate of growth in profit from one acre of wheat, the clover acreage in Egypt has decreased only by 4% per year during the period (1974-2014). This was due to the social dimension in the acquisition of farmers for dairy cattle, despite of the farm size, and also reflected what recent studies have shown that dairy market in Upper Egypt is not as active as in Lower Egypt, which has a share in weakened the quantitative impact of the price of buffalo milk on increasing the aggregate area of Egyptian clover. The study recommends to raising productivity of berseem from 24 tons per acre to 45 tons per acre, according to the results of the experiments conducted in the Research Institute of crop in Egypt, which would reduce the production costs per one acre of berseem and also reduces the increase in its area in favor of wheat in winter lug.