Economic Determinants Influencing Participation In food crop diversification amongst Smallholder Sugarcane Farmers in Mumias East Sub-County, Kakamega County, Kenya

Abstract

Crop diversification is a predominantly important coping mechanismfor agriculture's income, production and marketing risks. It is a key strategyfor mitigating food insecurity among small-scale farmers in Kenya. It enablesthem to spread production and income risk, reducing livelihood vulnerabilitytoweather or market shocks. Crop diversification among sugarcane farmershasbeen on the rise over time due to risks associated with sugarcane productionand marketing and declining sugarcane productivity. Consequently, thishasled to impaired sugarcane farmer households' goals of improvingfood, income and nutrition security. Therefore, the general objective of this studywas to analyse economic determinants affecting participation in foodcropdiversification amongst smallholder sugarcane farmers in Mumias East, Kakamega County, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study weretodetermine the socio-economic factors, and factors influencing smallholder sugarcane farmers' participation and to estimate the income differentialsindiversified cropping systems. The study was guided by RandomUtilityMaximization (RUM) theory and descriptive and cross-sectional researchdesigns were adopted. Multistage sampling whereby purposive, stratifiedandsystematic random sampling techniques were employed in the study toselect 154 farmers from a target population of 11,885 smallholder sugarcane farmer households. A questionnaire was used to collect data on Socio-economicfactors and other factors influencing participation and income differentials. The data was analysed using multivariate regression, farmgross marginandlogistic regression models with the help of STATA version 16 software. Theanalysed data was presented in the form of tables. Descriptive resultsrevealed that the mean age and farming experience of the farmers were55.72and 22.76 years respectively and owned on average 4.33 hectares of land. Multivariate linear regression results indicated that age, household incomelevel, education level, land size and household size were all statisticallysignificant and had an influence on food crop diversification amongsmallholder sugarcane farmers. Binary logistic regression results indicatedthat a unit increase in age, level of education, land size, membershiptoafarmer group and market price positively influenced farmer participationindiversified cropping systems by 117%, 81.7%, 745.5%, 228.2%and 117.3%respectively. Gross margin results revealed a significantly higher valueof revenues for diversified cropping systems of farming of KShs. 42,959.73ascompared to non-diversified of KShs. 35,634.69. Sugarcane productiongenerated the maximum GM of Kshs. 61,371.47 per acre per season whereasmaize, potatoes, cabbages, sorghum, beans and millet crop enterprisesproduced returns of Kshs. 57,609.82, KShs. 37,413.16, KShs. 33,856.20, KShs. 21,371.18, Kshs. 19,741.60 and Kshs. 16,246.33 per acre respectively. Therefore, from the results of this study, relevant stakeholders, county andnational governments should come up with an agricultural policy that supportsthe shift from non-diversification to crop diversification throughthedevelopment of guaranteed access and subsidies to farminputs resourcesthat will help boost farm production among smallholder sugarcane farmer vii households. Likewise, more farmers need to be trained on foodcropdiversification through the strengthening of the extension services. Thiswill help to solve the issues of food insecurity and also help farmers realizehighprofit margins from their farm output.