Abstract
Smallholder potato farmers in Uganda face many production and marketing challenges including limited access to markets and low surpluses for sale into the market. This study sought to underscore the factors that influence smallholder farmers’ decision to participate in the potato market and level of participation in such markets. Data were collected from 200 smallholder potato farmers in Kabale and Mbale districts. Descriptive statistics and a two-stage Heckman model were used to analyse the data. Results indicated that proximity to a village market positively and significantly (p ≤ 0.05) influenced decision to participate in the potato market. Results of the second stage of the model indicated that non-farm income earned negatively and significantly (p ≤ 0.01) affected the potato farmer’s level of market participation.
Highlights
In most of the developing countries, potato is considered the fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. [1]-[3] pointed out that since the second half of the 20th century, the relative importance of potato has slowly shifted from developed to developing countries more potato is still being produced in the former than the latter countries.Between 1994 and 2008, potato production in Sub Saharan Africa was estimated to have more than doubled from 100 metric tonnes to 290 metric tonnes with 70% of this growth concentrated in Eastern Africa [1]
The two-stage Heckman model was run to determine factors affecting farmers’ decision to participate and level of market participation and test the hypothesis that: High transaction costs associated with long distances from the farm to market locations limits farmer participation in potato markets
When market participation is defined as quantity or proportion of harvested output that is marketed, the researcher does not observed the dependent variable for households that do not participate in the market
Summary
In most of the developing countries, potato is considered the fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. [1]-[3] pointed out that since the second half of the 20th century, the relative importance of potato has slowly shifted from developed to developing countries more potato is still being produced in the former than the latter countries.Between 1994 and 2008, potato production in Sub Saharan Africa was estimated to have more than doubled from 100 metric tonnes to 290 metric tonnes with 70% of this growth concentrated in Eastern Africa [1]. In most of the developing countries, potato is considered the fourth most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize. [1]-[3] pointed out that since the second half of the 20th century, the relative importance of potato has slowly shifted from developed to developing countries more potato is still being produced in the former than the latter countries. Between 1994 and 2008, potato production in Sub Saharan Africa was estimated to have more than doubled from 100 metric tonnes to 290 metric tonnes with 70% of this growth concentrated in Eastern Africa [1]. The main drivers of this growth in production are increasing urbanisation and population growth. Urbanisation is estimated to rise from 34% in 2010 to 47% by 2015 [4]
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