Identifying factors that influence participation of farmers in maize marketing in the Highveld region of Eswatini

Abstract

The benefits of market participation are well established and primarily involve income generation and/or profits. Market participation is a farmer's preference for selling crops in the output market, creating opportunities for the commercialisation of production by smallholders. The transformation of subsistence farming to market-oriented agriculture is essential. A major benefit of this transition is that the money generated can be channelled to procure other essential goods and services to improve the livelihoods of farmers and rural families. In addition, if agriculture is market-oriented, then the product will meet the market standard in terms of quantity and quality and therefore improve food security while ensuring a healthy diet. However, while efforts to support agriculture and boost food security have been put in place, smallholder maize farmers in Eswatini have a limited meaningful participation in the market.

This shows that other underlying structural constraints limit smallholder maize market participation. Some of the elements influencing farmer market participation are climate, demography and socio-economic characteristics. Eswatini is divided into four agroclimatic regions, i.e. the Highveld, Middleveld, Lowveld and the Lubombo plateau. Of these, the Highveld region has the highest annual rainfall, and is thus reported to have climatic conditions most suited to maize production. The present study examines the dynamics of the participation of smallholder farmers in maize production in Eswatini's Highveld region and identifies factors that are likely to promote such participation. The study used secondary data which is farm household data that was collected from 191 smallholder maize farmers between the October 2016 and March 2017 cropping seasons. The data was collected from six communities in the Motshane rural development area (RDA) in the Highveld agroclimatic region, and a logit regression model was used to determine the factors that influence smallholder farmers' participation or non-participation in market-oriented agriculture.

Findings showed that access to farmer groups, the size of planted maize area, the use of fertiliser, access to credit and the availability of market information has a favorable impact and significant influence on the farmers' decision to sell in the market. However, the age of the head of the household had a significant but negative impact. Furthermore, a t-test was used to investigate if there was a difference in the means of the non-market participants and the market participants. The t-test results showed that there was a significant difference between the population means of the participants and non-participants. for variables such as age, maize area planted, surplus produce, member of farmer group, access to credit, availability of market information, use of fertiliser and hybrid seed varieties.

Therefore, policies that focus on providing access to land, lowering inputs costs and providing the poor with access to credit should be strengthened to enhance productivity and thereby promote market participation.