Smallholder Farmers’ Decision to Participate in Vegetable Marketing and the Volume of Sales in West Shewa Zone of Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study examines vegetable producers’ market participation and sales volume using cross-sectional data obtained from 385 randomly and proportionately sampled households from West Shewa zone, Oromia region of Ethiopia. Heckman two-step procedure was used to analyse the determinants of participation in vegetables markets and volume of sales during the study period. Probit model shows that education level, distance to nearest market, access to irrigation, use of pesticide and participation in any civic organization significantly affect market participation decision. Further, results from ordinary least squares regression show that sex of household head, land size, distance to farmer training centre, access to irrigation, use of pesticide and participation in civic organization significantly affect the level of market participation of the farm households in vegetable markets. The findings imply that support for female households, improving adult based education, participation in civic organization, infrastructure, access to irrigation and improved inputs are a means to increase vegetable production market participation and sales volume in West Shewa, Ethiopia.

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“…This means that education level of household head is very important in enhancing market participation rate as it enables to acquire the new ideas and modern techniques of agricultural production and therefore increases the market surplus. This result is in line with (Maponya et al, 2016;Rikitu et al, 2019 andRegasa et al, 2020) those who stated that as individual access more education he/she is empowered with the marketing skill and knowledge that will spur individual to participate in the market.…”

“…Moreover, female is the one who were responsible for many household domestic activities, they may not accomplish the farming activities on time and efficiently to participate in the market (Awotide et al, 2013). This implies that, the finding from this study might be because of the fact that the male headed household tend to possess larger output than the female headed households as a result of their higher access to productive inputs (Kifle et al 2017;Rikitu et al 2019).…”

“…Under a semi-commercial system, where both marketing and home consumption are playing a central role in production decision, all crops produced by a household may not be marketable surplus. Different authors adopted Heckman's two stage model to identify factors that affect producers' participation in output markets and also identify factors that determine the level of output supplied to the market (Bogale and Ayalneh, 2005;Shepherd, 2007;Azam et al, 2012;Rikitu et al, 2019). The Heckman model is useful for handling linear regression when there's a selection mechanism at work i.e.…”