Determinants of coffee supply by smallholder farmers in Nyabihoko sub-county Ntungamo District

Abstract

The general objective of the study is to establish the determinants of coffee supply by smallholder farmers in Nyabihoko sub-county, Ntungamo district. The further had three specific objectives and three research questions that were all used to achieve the study purpose. This research study employed a descriptive research design in which data was collected from smallholder coffee farmers selected randomly from Nyabihoko Sub-County. Simple random sampling was used to obtain and interview a sample of 60 smallholder coffee farmers from the population of study. Three parishes in Nyabihoko sub-county were randomly selected with at most one village from each parish. At least 20 smallholder coffee farmers from each selected village were randomly chosen and interviewed for this study. The sampling technique aimed at obtaining information from a sample of farmers through a formal survey using a questionnaire prepared by the researcher. The questionnaire was pre-tested before the main survey to check the relevance of questions and determine whether it was comprehensive enough to collect the relevant information. Results indicate that the major occupation of the farmers 95 % were smallholder farmers who only grew crops to earn a living from farming, 3.3% of them were livestock farmers who reared animals to earn a living and with only 1.7% being in the employment sector. However, some of the workers in other professions had resorted to farming as the major source of earning due to perhaps its higher profitability. Although the majority (76.7%) of the farmers do not belong to any farmer group, these groups do provide education and extension services (13.3%) to the coffee farmers thus giving them knowledge and skills on the modern methods of coffee production which will in turn increase on the profitability of the enterprise. Other farmer groups market the coffee (6.7%) on behalf of the farmers in addition to provision of low interest loans (3.3%) to plough into coffee production. Some farmers do harvest rain water and store it during time of drought that seriously hinders agricultural production where as others do artificial application of water in their gardens. The study therefore recommends that to enhance the profitability and production of coffee, there is need to encourage smallholder coffee farmers in Nyabihoko sub-county to open up more land for coffee production to increase the yields from this enterprise in order to attain economies of scale. This will reduce on the production costs per unit hence increasing on the gross margin of the enterprise since the size of land under coffee production has a significant relationship with the quantity harvested