| dc.description.abstract | The main objective of the study was to assess and determine the limitations to effective value addition amongst small scale agro-processing businesses. A descriptive cross-sectional study was adopted for this study; target population was all small-scale businesses engaged in agriculture value addition.
From the univariate analysis, 52% of the surveyed business enterprises were food kiosks, 20% were hotels, 18% were food hubs, and 6% were restaurants. All the surveyed enterprises had a valid trading license 68% of the surveyed enterprises were registered, 66% had books of accounting, 86% responded that they get constrained by legal challenges in their operations. Forty-Eight (48%) of the surveyed enterprises obtained raw materials from local markets, 10% got from input distributors and 18% were buying directly from farmers. All the surveyed enterprises said that they get challenges while getting inputs.
From the bivariate analysis, business registration (P=0.004, X2 =8.10), high prices (P=0.099, X2 =2.84), lack of modernized processing equipment (P=0.0512, X2=3.80), and legal constraints (P=0.067, X2=3.35) were associated with the ease of operation of enterprises/ value addition.
Finally, an attempt to determine the overall factors affecting effective value addition amongst small agro-processing factors, a binary logistic regression was run and it was found out that; registered businesses had higher odds of operating easily compared to those that are not registered (OR=117.5, P=0.007). It was again found out that businesses/ enterprises that were having technological challenges inform of lack of modernized processing equipment had lower odds of operating easily compared to their counterparts (OR=0.113, P=0.035). Finally, lack of efficient packaging technologies had a moderate effect on the ease of value addition amongst enterprises whereby firms lacking efficient packaging had lower odds of easily carrying out value addition compared to their counterparts (OR=0.078, P=0.065).
Findings indicated the need to support small scale firms/ enterprises have ability to purchase and utilize modern agro-processing technologies to increase their efficiency in value addition. In addition to this, the researcher recommended an extensive research be carried on technological constraints to value addition. | en_US |
