Analysis of Factors Influencing Consistency of Contracted Small Holder Vegetable Farmers to Supply National Agricultural Marketing Board in Eswatini

Ndabenhle A. Mangwe¹ , Lovemore Rugube² , Sotja G. Dlamini³ , Douglas Kibirige⁴ , Ajay S. Singh⁵

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.6 , Issue.7 , pp.39-51, Jul-2020

Online published on Jul 31, 2020

Copyright © Ndabenhle A. Mangwe, Lovemore Rugube, Sotja G. Dlamini, Douglas Kibirige, Ajay S. Singh . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
The National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) in Eswatini is faced with a challenge of inconsistence supply of vegetable by its contracted smallholder farmers. The objectives of the study were; to determine the socio-economic characteristics of contracted smallholder vegetables farmers that supply to the NAMBoard; to assess the factors influencing the consistency of contracted smallholder vegetables farmers that supply NAMBoard and to determine the challenges associated with the smallholder farmer?s probability of inconsistently supplying to NAMBoard. The study was conducted in the Manzini region of Eswatini, targeting smallholder farmers operating on a commercial basis and contracted to National Agricultural Marketing Board.123 vegetable farmers were randomly sampled for the study. A Multinomial logistic regression model was used to analyze factors influencing the consistency of contracted smallholder farmers to supply vegetables to the National Agricultural Marketing Board. Socio-demographic results indicate that majority of smallholder vegetable farmers were males (66.2%) and with the average age 50 years old. The challenges associated with the probability to supply the Market inconsistently included lack of access to seed and lack access to seedlings, difficulties in accessing fertilizer, lack of produce storage, and shortage of farmland. The study recommended that policies aimed at availing resources for improved productivity of vegetables should be gender sensitive to empower women and youth with productive resources so that they can also be able to consistently supply markets; public private partnerships (PPP) from government and Non-Governmental Organizations should be formed and used as programmes offering institutional support so that smallholder farmers can consistently participate in lucrative formal markets; farmers should form partnerships or associations to be able to supply formal markets, and government should invest in improving road infrastructure particularly feeder roads that link farmers to major high ways

Key-Words / Index Term :
Smallholder vegetable farmers, Contract farming, Consistency

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