Livestock production is the primary financial resource for most farmers in Mpumalanga
province. Although commercial farmers require necessary equipment and technology to
maximise their production and profit, but emerging small-scale farmers in the province face
many challenges which have hindered their efforts to improve their livelihood, besides
intervening in the procedure of commercialisation. Therefore, this study investigates the
socioeconomic characteristics of the livestock farmers in the province, the determinants of
market access and those influencing marketing inefficiency, with a view to developing policy
recommendations.
Structured questionnaire was administered to 300 farmers in order to capture information on
market access and factors that could influence marketing inefficiency. Descriptive statistics
was utilised regarding basic characteristics of the households. A logit regression model was
used to analyse market access (sale of livestock through formal markets) using STATA.
Marketing inefficiency was computed as the reciprocal of marketing efficiency which was
calculated using Shepherd formula, while the two stage Least Square regression was applied
for factors influencing marketing inefficiency after identifying market access endogenous
variable.
The study’s extrapolations indicated that 7 variables were consequential at 1% and 5%
significance level with market access, namely transport ownership, transport cost, market
price information, advertisement, farmers’ perception, marketing channel used and
municipality. In addition, the results of the two stage least square model indicated that only 3
variables had remarkable significance with regard to marketing inefficiency. These are market
access, livestock composition and infrastructure.
The findings of the study evidenced that to reduce marketing inefficiency, then it is
paramount to enable the easy dissemination of information and improving infrastructure so as
to give small-scale farmers easy access to the markets. Consequently, addressing marketing
constraints will provide an insight that will allow development of strategies to deal with those
problems correctly and more efficiently. The study recommended that focus should be centred
on addressing the constraints existing in livestock marketing system to enhance access to
markets by encouraging youth participation in agricultural activities and providing training
programmes and easy access for marketing related information. Also, infrastructure deserves
to be given more attention by renovating the marketing facilities especially road networks in
rural areas. In addition, extension officers and veterinary services are to provide help and
support in preventing infections and diseases in order to minimise the losses. / Agriculture, Animal Health and Human Ecology / M. Sc. (Agriculture)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/24978 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Sehar, Malika |
| Contributors | Oyekale, Abayomi Samauel |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | 1 online resources (xii, 93 leaves) : illustrations (some color), graphs (some color), 1 color maps |
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