Adoption and Commercialization of Soybean among smallholder farmers in Chipata District of Zambia

Abstract

Promotion of sustained increase in agricultural production and productivity of crops with comparative advantage such as soybean is one of the focus areas for the Zambian agricultural sector. The soybean sub-sector has been identified to possess immerse opportunities and benefits which if harnessed could contribute a lot in uplifting living standards of smallholder farmers. However, to realize these potential benefits, enhanced adoption and commercialization of soybean among smallholder farmers is critical. This study was conducted to assess how demographic, socioeconomic, institutional and attitudinal factors affect adoption, intensity of adoption and commercialization of soybean among smallholder farming households. The study used data from 160 household interviews, 8 focused group discussions and 8 key informant interviews conducted in Chipata district of eastern Zambia. The area was identified due to its high agricultural potential but also because it has in the recent past received a lot of development support towards promotion of legumes. Analysis on soybean adoption and intensity of adoption was conducted using Double Hurdle regression analysis. Results established that age, household size, ownership to livestock and access to credit significantly affected soybean adoption. Results further showed that the extent/intensity of soybean adoption was influenced by the presence of off-farm income, size of land holding, ownership to livestock, access to credit, gender and the marital status of the farmer. Tobit regression analysis was used to assess soybean commercialization. Results indicated that gender; household size, ownership to livestock and size of land holding were significant factors that influenced soybean commercialization. Lastly, Factors analysis was used to identify latent dimensions underlying the different variables that measured respondents’ attitudes towards soybean adoption and commercialization. Results showed that after extraction, the variables were loaded around three factors which were named; Seed access and crop diversification, Soybean pricing and marketing as well as Gender relations and food processing. The three factors generally explained 79 percent of the variance in the model. The study concluded demographic characteristics such as age and gender as well as access to production resources such as land, labour; and institutional factors such as access to agricultural extension services and access to credit significantly influenced Soybean adoption and commercialization. The study further concluded that farmers were generally had negative attitude towards Soybean as they were not eager to adopt and commercialize the crop. By implication, there is need for policy makers to revise policies that govern land allocation in order to make land more available to smallholder farmers. There is also need to engage the private sector to find ways of reducing the cost of credit to make it more available as well as find ways of providing subsidized production inputs. This would make Soybean attractive and positively influence its adoption and commercialization. There is also need to improve and revise the agricultural extension system by employing more staff and using more bottoms-up and participatory approaches such as Farmer Field Schools. This will improve the farmer’s knowledge and skills about Soybean which would ultimately influence its adoption and commercialization. Lastly, given the high level of variability across districts in eastern province future research should increase sample size in order to ensure that results are more representative. Further, studies on crop adoption should not just end on assessing adoption but go further to assess commercialization. This is because improvement in livelihood would only come about due to increased incomes from large scaled crop production. The study also recommends that there is need for further research to ascertain why land is a significant constraint to crop adoption and commercialization.