Abstract
Smallholder commercialization is central to international development policy and practice. As a result, several arrangements to foster market linkages are being implemented. Especially popular are farmers’ organizations, which are believed to be owned, controlled, and financed by smallholders. As such, their design is considered inclusive given every household in a community is theoretically allowed to become a member, and the governance and management structure encourage participatory decision-making. However, even in the context in which farmers’ organizations are actively promoted, a notable proportion of smallholders may not be able to engage in market-oriented production or may opt for the existing alternative marketing arrangements, as dictated by individual households’ socioeconomic characteristics. Focusing on the case of smallholder farming in Olenguruone, Nakuru county, Kenya, where a donor funded dairy farmers’ cooperative marketing arrangement is promoted alongside existing marketing opportunities, the present research investigated the factors that determine smallholders’ commercial farming orientation and marketing arrangements. It employed a case study approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods for a more complete empirical inquiry. The findings demonstrate that irrespective of the external support provided through marketing opportunities such as farmer organizations, smallholders’ engagement in commercial farming and marketing is dictated by the socioeconomic attributes and market perceptions that are heterogeneous among households in a smallholder community.
Highlights
The results show that farmers in the cooperative category, and those in the Brookside group, have relatively more farming assets: farm plot sizes and livestock
Irrespective of the outlined motivations against Olenguruone Dairy Farmers Cooperative Society (ODFCS) membership, our findings demonstrate that to a certain extent, the cooperative serves an important role in the local commercial dairy industry
The present study set out to explore the commercial farming orientation and inclination towards specific marketing arrangements based on individual smallholders’
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).Poverty and incidences of hunger and malnutrition remain high among smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet smallholder agriculture is considered the key solution to these challenges. Smallholders constitute farmers who rely on small farms (family farms) and are likely to experience marginalization in terms of access to land resources, input, technology, and information available to farmers with larger farms [1,2]. Improving their small farms’
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
