Factors Affecting the Choice of Marketing Channel by Vegetable Farmers in Swaziland

Bongiwe G Xaba and Micah B Masuku

Sustainable Agriculture Research, 2013, vol. 02, issue 01

Abstract: Vegetables as a group of horticultural crops are important for their contribution as an income support to a large proportion of the rural households. However, enhancing vegetable farmers to reach markets and actively engage in the markets is a key challenge influencing vegetable production in Swaziland. The perishable nature of vegetables necessitates effective marketing channels. The aim of this paper was to investigate factors affecting farmers’ choice of marketing channels using survey data gathered during the 2011 production season. Data were collected from 100 randomly selected vegetable farmers. Descriptive and multinomial logistic regression analyses were used. The results indicated that age of the farmer, quantity of baby corn produced and level of education were significant predictors of the choice to sell vegetables to NAMBoard market channel instead of selling to other-wholesale market channel. The age of the farmer, distance from production area to market, membership in farmer organization and marketing agreement were significant determinants of the choice to use non-wholesale market channel over other-wholesale market channel. It is therefore important to promote collective action as an institutional vehicle for linking farmers to agribusiness supply chains. Farmers should establish networks since they aid in sharing knowledge, farmers can improve produce grades as required by market.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Agricultural Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/231341/files/p112_112-123_.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ccsesa:231341

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.231341

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sustainable Agriculture Research from Canadian Center of Science and Education
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().