Abstract
Market participation has a potential to increase farmers’ rural incomes and employment opportunities especially if farmers concentrate on production and marketing of local crops requiring low inputs such as sweet potatoes. The purpose of this research was to investigate the factors that determine farmers’ shift in market participation from village to regional market in Vihiga County. Cross-sectional data was collected and a multinomial logit model was used for the analysis. Participation in local town market rather than village market was influenced by credit access, total income, transport mode to market, access to extension services, age, value addition done and the quantity of sweet potatoes supplied, while; transport mode, land size, quantity of sweet potatoes and gender determined participation for the regional option. It is recommended that the local and national government should: Increase its support in the establishment of sweet potato market; improve the rural road networks to cut down transport costs, and increase support to farmer groups or associations to increase farmers’ market participation. Key words: Determinants, smallholder sweet potato farmers, participation, market options.
Highlights
Poverty in Africa has been found to be predominantly a rural phenomenon
Sweet potato farmers who mainly sell their produce to the regional markets have the largest average land acreage of 4.03, followed by 3.03, 2.1 and 2 acres for local town, village and neighbor market options, respectively
Income from sweet-potatoes and value addition were positively related to market participation explaining the monetary incentives that make the larger market other than the village market attractive to the farmers
Summary
Poverty in Africa has been found to be predominantly a rural phenomenon. According to Omiti et al (2009), agriculture supports the livelihoods of about 80% of the rural population in Kenya (about 85% of them being small-scale farmers). The agricultural sector employs 70% of the national labor force through forward and backward industrial linkages, providing food and incomes to individuals and households (Omiti et al, 2009). Crop-livestock production systems on small scale farms often entail very little use of purchased inputs and limited application of modern technology with majority of farmers producing for subsistence. Meeting the challenge of reducing poverty and improving rural incomes in Kenya
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