Socio-economic Factors Affecting Uptake of Banana Value Addition among Smallholders in Chuka Sub-county, Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya

Abstract

Banana farmers in most parts of Kenya have not embraced value addition despite its accrued economic benefits and emphasis by stakeholders. A study was done in Chuka Sub-County, Tharaka Nithi County to identify the socio-economic factors affecting uptake of banana value addition by farmers. The study was based on the diffusion of innovations theory to establish the relationship between farming experience, group membership, access to credit and uptake of banana value addition. The study adopted a descriptive research design whereby frequency tables were generated whilst both qualitative and quantitative data was collected. The target population was 20,180 banana farming households in Chuka Sub-County and 3 key informants. Purposive sampling, Random sampling and snowballing techniques were used to select the 156 banana farmers. A pilot study of 24 (15% of sample size) households was done in Imenti South and the questionnaire was found to be reliable (Cronbach alpha value, α˂0.785). With a 90% questionnaire return rate, the data collected was analyzed using SPSS version 25 and presented using frequency tables. Binary logistic regression was used to test the levels of significance of variables and the model through the Hosmer & Lemeshow test of the goodness of fit suggested that the it was good for fit to the data as p=0.480 (>0.05) while ANOVA analyses were used to check the presence of multicollinearity. It was observed that only 31.9% of farmers uptake banana value addition and there were no banana value addition technologies identified with 35.6% and 64.4% of those who uptake doing banana ripening for sale and bulk packaging respectively. The results [P=0.05] showed that group membership [p=0.019] and access to credit [p=0.004] had a positive and significant effect on the uptake of banana value addition by farmers at varying levels. It was observed that farming experience had a positive effect on the uptake, but was statistically insignificant. The study recommended that; farmers should be encouraged to form cooperatives on value addition and the government and other stakeholders in conjunction with financial institutions need to streamline policies to enhance farmer’s access credit for effective farming among others.

Determinants of utilization of banana value addition among small-scale agripreneurs in Kenya: A case of Kisii County

“…Only two studies investigated the factors influencing the decision to adopt banana value addition. For instance, Muigai et al (2021) in Kenya reported that access to credit and group membership influenced the decision to add value to banana fruit; while extension services, cropping systems, and gender of farmers by Natukwatsa (2021) in Uganda had a significant effect on decision to participate in banana value addition. There is no empirical information on determinants of banana value addition in Kenya.…”

“…The categorical and continuous variables that were used in the econometric analysis are shown in Table 1. They were obtained from literature review of previous studies (Adam et al, 2023;Bundi et al, 2020;Khoza et al, 2019;Korir et al, 2020;Maku et al, 2022;Mkandawire et al, 2018;Muigai et al, 2021;Musyoka et al, 2020;Natukwatsa, 2021;Okeke et al, 2022;Tijani, 2022). Before analysis, continuous variables were tested for multicollinearity problem using Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) (Table 2).…”

“…Under such circumstances, it is important to process banana to storable products for instance banana powder, flour, chips, dried slices, jam, beverages, baby foods among others (Kikulwe et al, 2020). However, agripreneurs have inadequate technical knowledge on how to handle highly perishable produce in the fruit industry (Muigai et al, 2021).…”

Perceived Usefulness of Banana Pseudostem Processing and Value Addition among Farmers in Coimbatore District of Tamil Nadu

“…A er harves ng of fruits and leaves, pseudostem is cut near to the ground level and its yield ranges from 60 t o 8 0 t / h a . F i b r e e x t r a c o n f r o m pseudostem is being done mostly by hand extrac on in villages of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, K a r n a t a k a , A n d h r a P r a d e s h a n d Maharashtra with extremely poor fibre output (0.5 kg/day/man) (Muigai et al, 2021).…”