Socio-economic and cultural factors influencing farmers’ group participation for commercialization of apiculture among small holder farmers in Homa bay county, Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya, many government policies target apiculture farmer groups as the vehicle for agricultural development. However, it has been realised that there is low level of membership to these groups both at individual and household levels with a marked regional dimension for apiculture farmers. As a result, commercialization of apiculture remains a major challenge. The objective of this study was to identify socio-economic and cultural factors that influence group participation for commercialization of apiculture among small holder farmers. The study used survey method. Five farmer groups were purposely selected for focus group discussion to capture various determinants of group participation among the apiculture small holder farmers. Data were collected through face-to-face interview technique. Analysis involved both descriptive and inferential whereby Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 24 was used to process and analyse the collected data. Descriptive statistics including measures of central tendency such as frequencies, means and standard deviation were applied to the data. For inferential statistics t-test, chi-square and regression of the independent variables was used to test the rate of influence of independent variables on dependent variable. Results unveiled that for every unit increase of socio-economic and cultural factors leads to an increase in commercialization of apiculture through group participation among small holder farmers by 0.741 (β= 0.741) units and was statistically significant (p=0.007, p 0.05). Therefore, household income, farm size, age and family size were the major socio-economic and cultural factors that are significant and strongly influence group participation for commercialization of apiculture. From the findings, socio-economic and cultural factors influence farmer group participation most hence they should be addressed appropriately to enhance commercialization of apiculture.