Smallholder farmers in Tubur Sub-county Soroti district

Abstract

The productivity of common bean is still low due to some of the challenges and constraints being faced by farmers. The aim of this study was to understand the challenges and constraints facing smallholder common bean farmers in Tubur Sub-County Soroti district. The specific objectives were; to characterize common bean smallholder farmers in the study area, examine the challenges and constraints faced by smallholder common bean farmers. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select respondents. A sample of 57 households was selected from the population of the bean smallholder farmers in the study area. Primary data was collected from the field using structured interview method. Data was also obtained through secondary sources such as Published literature such as books, journals and articles were reviewed from internet to get robust information related to this study. The information/data obtained from these sources include; findings of other researchers for literature review. In the analysis of data, both objective one and two were analyzed using descriptive statistics in SPSS. The study results showed that, the average age of the respondents was 42 years, average education level was 8 years of schooling, average farming experience was 23.9 years and average common bean farming experience was 10.5 years. The most high pressing challenges and constraints faced by farmers were; shortage of water for irrigation, poor roads and other infrastructure, lack of credit access to buy inputs for production, inadequate market information among others and the least was low demand in the market. This implies that, if this study is positively recognized by bean industry stakeholders, it may significantly contribute as a source of information for overcoming the challenges and constraints faced by smallholder common bean farmers thus improving the productivity of common beans.