FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DAIRY INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT AND MILK PRODUCTION LEVEL IN MALAYSIA: A HYBRID APPROACH OF CODING AND THEME DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The Malaysian dairy industry does not produce a sufficient quantity of dairy products to satisfy domestic market needs. As a result, Malaysia is one of the highest milk importing countries in the world. This article focuses on the factors influencing the dairy cattle industry development and milk production in Malaysia. The population of this study covers the whole of Malaysia’s dairy industry which includes dairy cattle farmers, supporting industries, universities, government veterinary departments, and all direct and indirect related organizations. Semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with twelve participants. Porters’ Diamond model was used to inform the qualitative hybrid analytic process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis, which was applied to interpret raw data from interview transcripts. The authors integrated the theory-driven and data-driven codes using Nvivo 10 software. Analysis of the raw data resulted in the identification of overarching themes or elements that influence the production of the dairy industry. The results showed that the problems have spread to all aspects of the industry such as lack of capital resources, lack of knowledge of farming, lack of skilled manpower, low-quality breed and animal feed, inappropriate local environment, high costs and inaccessibility of the inputs. In fact, this study provides a roadmap for the future dairy industry development plan in Malaysia. Therefore, all stakeholders should contribute together to address the mentioned challenges one by one with the aim to improve this industry