Abstract
Indigenous chicken (IC) contribute significantly to income and food security of rural communities. However, the IC are kept in systems that are characterised by high risk conditions such as diseases, predation, inadequate feeding and poor housing resulting in sub optimal production levels and profitability. Agricultural insurance therefore becomes an attractive option of minimizing these risks. Uptake of agricultural insurance on IC remains low in Kenya. Furthermore, information on agricultural insurance as a tool of minimizing risk is limited. The objective of the study was to investigate IC farmers’ attitude towards agricultural insurance with the aim of providing important information to insurance firms and compensation schemes targeting IC. Structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 240 IC farmers in Nyanza region using a multi stage sampling procedure. Mean score from a five point Likert type scale was used to analyze agricultural insurance attitude of IC farmers. Results established that IC farmers had a positive attitude towards agricultural insurance. Farmers indicated that agricultural production was faced with a variety of risks and uncertainty and that insurance was beneficial and reduces production related stress. However, they were willing to pay for an insurance scheme publicly owned and that agricultural insurance should be mandatory. Therefore, the study recommends that government and non-governmental organization need to sensitize IC farmers on the importance of agricultural insurance policy. Insurance firms need to reach out to the farmers on their role in mitigating risk, offer their products and services and charge affordable insurance premium to them. Key words: Insurance, attitude, indigenous chicken.
Highlights
Indigenous chicken (IC) keeping in Kenya is based on two distinct production systems, namely semi intensive and extensive systems
The largest proportion of the IC are kept in systems that are characterized by high risk conditions such as diseases, predation, inadequate feeding, poor housing and extreme weather changes which hinder them from attaining high economic production level (Ondwasy et al, 2006; Phiri et al, 2007)
The study determined the attitude of IC farmers towards insurance
Summary
Indigenous chicken (IC) keeping in Kenya is based on two distinct production systems, namely semi intensive and extensive (free range) systems. The free range system is the most predominant system and is common in rural areas where the chicken are kept on a smallscale using locally available feed resources (Okitoi et al., 2007; Okeno et al, 2012). The birds are left to scavenge during the day and are confined in shelters of moderate cost at night. They get supplementation with grains, oil seed cake, food waste and commercial feeds (King’ori et al, 2010). Risk being the probability attached to the occurrence of the uncertain events of a production or investment decision by a farmer, presents non-determinate probability of occurrence of these events as it is beyond ordinary human control, that is, the probabilities of the possible outcomes are unknown (Hardaker et al, 2004)
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