Market participation by vegetable farmers in Kenya: A comparison of rural and peri-urban areas
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Date
2009-05Author
Otieno, David Jakinda
Omiti, John
Nyanamba, Timothy
Mccullough, Ellen
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Transformations in agri-food systems provide prospects for improving livelihoods of many farmers
through enhanced participation in commercial agriculture. Indeed, various studies have been
undertaken to establish factors that influence the level of market orientation in different areas. However,
those studies do not show appropriate objective criteria to support decisions for either separating or
merging data and the subsequent analyses for different sites. Consequently, policy inferences made
from such studies may be misleading due to failure to statistically account for site-specific variations in
data. This study fills the analytical gap evident in literature by using the Chow test and descriptive
measures of statistical difference to compare the intensity of market participation among rural and periurban
vegetable farmers in Kenya. Results show that there are significant differences in the percentage
of output sold, distance from farm to market, and the unit price of sale for output between the Rural and
Peri-Urban areas. These findings demonstrate the urgent need for appropriate statistical evidence to
improve disaggregated analyses of agricultural market participation in different systems and
environments. This would enable targeting of development strategies to effectively address the
changing agricultural landscape; particularly enhancing food supply and ensuring better farm incomes.
There is need to improve market information provision, develop farmers’ business skills, improve roads
and or support establishment of high value vegetable market outlets at different scales in Rural and
Peri-Urban areas.
Citation
African Journal of Agricultural Research Vol. 4 (5), pp. 451-460, May 2009Publisher
Department of Agricultural Economics
Description
Journal article