The impact of National Agricultural Advisory Services on household welfare in Uganda: a case study of Masaka district, Buwunga sub-County

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the impact of national agricultural advisory services on household welfare conducted in Buwunga sub-county, Masaka district. The factors used to assess the welfare were gender, age, maximum education level, marital status, and household size and extension services like good quality seeds, livestock breeds and fertilizers. Primary data was collected from 100 household heads who were aged 18 years and above. The analysis was done using frequency distribution and binary logistic regression in SPSS. From the results of analysis, majority of the respondents (60%) were male, most were aged between 31 to 45 years (49%), majority of the farmers were married (69%), most attained secondary level (32%) and most practiced both crop and animal farming (39%), majority lived between 4 to 8 members (58%), majority received quality seeds, majority received livestock breeds 51%, majority received technology (69%), majority did not receive fertilizers (69%) and majority of the farmers (65%) did not benefit from NAADS extension services. In bivariate level analysis it was found out that the significant factors that impact household welfare were education level, household size, technological services and fertilizers whose p-values were less than 0.05. In multivariate analysis highly educated people are more likely to have a better household welfare (Odds Ratio=1.117). Household with a very many people (Odds Ratio=0.879) are less likely to have a better household welfare compared to a household with few members. Similarly a household that uses simple technology (Odds Ratio=0.981) is less likely to have a better welfare than the household that uses advanced technology. Such findings of the research show that there is need to increase agricultural aids organisations so that there is an increase in the production of food that will increase food and sales in food to increase the incomes of households hence improve the household welfare. The NAADS extension services need to be designed to fit the needs of low productivity of food. The government needs to come up and subsidize the basic needs in life so that there is adequate extension of health services, education and income to the farmers.