Abstract
Poverty is increasing in rural areas of Kenya. The study examined factors influencing vulnerability of French beans farmers to expected poverty using Vulnerability to Expected Poverty approach on 492 randomly selected respondents. The study found a mean vulnerability to expected poverty of 19.6% which is below vulnerability threshold of 50% indicating that majority of French bean farmers irrespective of Global-GAP certification status were invulnerable to expected poverty. However, majority of those who were expenditure (56.3 percent) and income poor (92.2 percent) are vulnerable to future poverty. Factors influencing vulnerability to expected poverty are asset value (P=0.000), net crop income (P=0.000), off-farm income (P=0.000), household size (P=0.000), age of household head (p = 0.088), gender of household head (P=0.001) and distance to market (P=0.000). French beans farmers should practice farm diversification and expand acreage under Global-GAP certified French beans in order to increase income and expenditure and hence alleviate future poverty. Key words: French Beans, Vulnerability, Poverty, Global-Gap Standards DOI : 10.7176/JESD/10-10-14 Publication date :May 31 st 2019
Highlights
Since independence, poverty reduction, disease eradication and health has been recognized as the key pillars to consider in policy formulation in order to attain progressive development and increased living standards of Kenyan citizens health (Republic of Kenya, 1965)
French bean farmers, irrespective of whether certified or not, were not vulnerable to expected poverty as indicated by vulnerability level of 0.196 (19.6 percent), which is below the vulnerability threshold of 50 percent (Table 3)
The reason why Global-GAP certification is not significantly related to the future poverty is because, income to be earned from producing the French beans will not be sufficient enough to drive French bean farmers out of poverty
Summary
Poverty reduction, disease eradication and health has been recognized as the key pillars to consider in policy formulation in order to attain progressive development and increased living standards of Kenyan citizens health (Republic of Kenya, 1965). Statistics indicate that, the probability of falling non-poor, moderately poor and extremely poor in rural areas in Kenya is 42, 13 and 45 percent respectively. According to Republic of Kenya (2005), rural poverty in Central region where Kirinyaga County is located range between percent and the same trend is observed across constituency level. In Kirinyaga County, rural vulnerability to expected poverty stands at 31.9 percent, which is slightly higher than the national rate of 28.3 percent (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 2017)
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