SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS INFLUENCING FOOD CROPS DIVERSIFICATION AMONG SMALLHOLDER SUGARCANE FARMERS IN MUMIAS EAST SUB-COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Crop diversification is a predominantly important coping mechanism for agriculture's income, production and marketing risks. It is a key strategy for mitigating food insecurity among smallscale farmers in Kenya. It enables them to spread production and income risk, reducing livelihood vulnerability to weather or market shocks. Crop diversification among sugarcane farmers has been on the rise over time due to risks associated with sugarcane production and marketing and declining sugarcane productivity. Consequently, this has led to impaired sugarcane farmer households’ goals of improving food, income and nutrition security. Therefore, the objectives of the study was to determine the socio-economic factors affecting food crop diversification among smallholder sugarcane farmers in Mumias East Sub County. The study was guided by Random Utility Maximization (RUM) theory and descriptive and cross-sectional research designs were adopted. Multistage sampling whereby purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques were employed in the study to select 155 farmers from a target population of 11,885 smallholder sugarcane farmer households. A questionnaire was used to collect data and data was analysed multivariate regression model with the help of STATA version 16 software. The analysed data was presented in the form of tables, bar charts and graphs. Descriptive results revealed that the mean age and farming experience of the farmers was 55.72 and 22.76 years respectively and owned on average 4.33 hectares of land. Multivariate linear regression results indicated that age, household income level, education level, land size and household size were all statistically significant and had an influence on food crop diversification among smallholder sugarcane farmers. Binary logistic regression results indicated that a unit increase in age, level of education, land size, membership to a farmers’ group and market price positively influenced farmer participation in diversified cropping system by 117%, 81.7%, 745.5%, 228.2% and 117.3% respectively. Therefore, from the results of this study, relevant stakeholders, county and national governments should come up with an agricultural policy that supports the shift from non-diversification to crop diversification through the development of guaranteed access and subsidies to farm inputs resources that will help boost farm production among smallholder sugarcane farmer households. This will help to solve the issues of food insecurity and also help farmers to realize high-profit margins from their farm output.