WAYS TO ENSURE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF MILK PRODUCTION IN UKRAINE
The starting point was the statement that providing conditions for sufficient consumption of milk and dairy products by the population of Ukraine is one of the urgent tasks of food security. The issue of overcoming the crisis of milk production, which has been observed in recent years and is manifested in a steady reduction in the volume and number of livestock remains unresolved, which determined the subject and objectives of the study. The purpose of the article is formulated as the definition of the main trends in the activities of milk production enterprises, the development measures to improve their activities efficiency. Its achievement has necessitated the allocation of structural elements of the agricultural complex. The subsectors of the dairy subcomplex, the core of which is represented by dairy cattle, are considered separately. Trends and rates of change has been researched in milk production, livestock, average annual milk yield per cow, the structure of milk production in terms of households and industrial livestock, indicators of profitability of milk production based on the analysis of statistical data. The special attention is paid to the problems of the goat's milk market given the indicators of efficiency and export attractiveness. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were obtained: the dominance of the household milk product segment is an obstacle to building an appropriate mechanism for controlling the quality of raw milk; increasing production productivity through mechanization and automation; increasing the economic potential of the dairy industry requires active state regulation through the use of tax regulation tools, tariff and non-tariff levers to increase the products competitiveness without further increase in price; a promising area of development of the dairy sub-sector is the association and cooperation of small producers. Household cooperation has the potential to improve the conditions for the economic interests realization of milk producers by increasing the influence of associations and unions in the market, given the significant price asymmetry. Key words: milk production, economic stability, dairy subcomplex, industrial cattle breeding, dairy cattle breeding.