Determination of risk factors in cattle and small ruminant livestock enterprises from the perspective of animal life insurance: a case study in Turkey

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to determine the risk factors in the production processes of cattle and small ruminant breeding enterprises, along with developing a scale that could be used during the insured breeding process in different regions of Turkey. In this study, we obtained information from 252 enterprises from different provinces (Afyonkarahisar, Aksaray, Ankara, Burdur, Karaman, and Konya) of Turkey. Reliability and validity analyses were conducted using the “Risk Assessment Form in Cattle and Small Ruminant Animal Production”. The Cronbach alpha (α) coefficient was used to analyze reliability, while the exploratory factor analysis was applied to analyze the validity. About 68.7% (173) of the enterprises included cattle breeding, while the remaining 31.3% (79) involved small ruminant breeding. To determine the risk factors, twenty-four questions were directed toward the livestock enterprises, and the following six factors were determined: Economic-Political Risks, Yield/Product Losses, Enterprise Technical Risks, Credit/Financing, Workforce, Enterprise Follow-up, and Registration. In the politico-economic risk scoring, the score of enterprises already having Animal life insurance (ALI) was observed to be higher than those who did not have it, with the difference being statistically significant (p<0.05). We interpreted that producers with higher politico-economic risk factor scores preferred insurance. Although the producers could determine the risk factors well, not all producers were necessarily aware of risk measures. Thus, it was necessary to improve the farmers’ perception of risks and support their efforts to manage and reduce these risks. Also, the importance of insurance practices within and out of the farm is predicted to increase gradually to develop more conscious, sustainable, and profitable breeding in agriculture and animal product markets, which are becoming more liberalized day by day.