Forecasting milk production in Bangladesh toward achieving self-sufficiency

Bangladesh dairy has been emerging as a transformation from livelihood-oriented dairy toward enterprise-driven dairy while it can still be seen as a key source of income and livelihoods for millions of people There is an increasing emphasis by the government for achieving self-sufficiency However, there have been challenges as the lack in authentic milk production data availability which counteract in estimating the self-sufficiency There is a growing demand for milk along with the increasing consumer's preferences on high-quality milk The objective of this study was to forecast Bangladesh milk production to analyze the possible timeframe for achieving the self-sufficiency This study applies Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model and compares with the classical Trend Analysis Model (TAM) with three scenarios (i) Exponential growth, (ii) Compounding Average Growth Rate (CAGR), (iii) Simple Average Growth Rate (SAGR), built in MS Excel using time series milk data (2006 to 2019) obtained from the Department of Livestock Services (DLS), Integrated Dairy Research Network (IDRN) Sector database and International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN) Sector database The results revealed the superiority of ARIMA model over the trend analysis The maximum milk production of Bangladesh in 2025 and 2030 will be 10 24 and 13 65 million tons, respectively (according to IDRN data) while that will be 16 32 and 17 13 million ton, respectively according to DLS Considering the only population as demand factor (deterministic approach), taking the results from the ARIMA model, Bangladesh will be self-sufficient in 2029 according to DLS data and according to IDRN data, Bangladesh will achieve 71% self-sufficient in 2029 The forecasting was calculated only with normal year with some mild shock in the milk production However, the impact of severe shock-like Coronavirus in 2020 has not been possible to integrate due to anecdotal in data, which implies that including such shock in future this forecasting might lead to the different pace of the self-sufficiency achievement The results of ARIMA model using DLS data was substantially different than IDRN data which might need to take into account to identify why those data were different and might revise the data backwards to increase the degree of precision for estimating the future milk production data From this study, it is evident that under normal condition, Bangladesh could reach to the self-sufficiency in 2029 but the year like 2020 (with pandemic coronavirus) need to be observed in the future and might need strategic decision to continue the current growth rate The precise documentation of the milk production data would lead to the right path toward self-sufficiency The future study might focus on the stochastic demand and supply factor for self-sufficiency analysis