Scientific African (Jun 2024)
What determine livestock feed and marketing? Insights from rural Ethiopia
Abstract
In sub-Saharan Africa where farmers undergo rapid losses of grazing lands and pasture areas, they face feed scarcity and poor animal marketing. In response, farmers make non-separable decisions on feed production and livestock marketing. Under the context of non-separable decision, however, factors affecting livestock feed collection and marketing are unclear in the literature. With the aim of addressing such a gap, this study has proposed two research questions: (1) what factors determine household's decisions on feed collection and livestock marketing? (2) Does feed collection influence livestock marketing? For the analysis, cross sectional data were gathered from 689 households in rural Ethiopia. While Tobit model was used to determine feed collection, two-stage Heckman model was deployed to identify key factors affecting livestock marketing. The study found that household's access to communal land, size of livestock holding, share-in land and own farmlands had positive and significant influence on feed collection. This urges farmers to involve in livestock marketing via selling their extra yield. Increased feed collection from communal and croplands leads to improve animal productivity. Econometric results further showed that household's education and access to training were influencing feed collection and livestock marketing positively. It also confirmed that feed collection and provision of credit services had significant effects on livestock marketing. The study further showed that livestock marketing was hardly realized without gathering feed from communal and private lands, which also entails the need to maintain the environment. This study is useful because it provides the significant roles of farm education, animal holding, credit services, communal and private lands in improving access to feed sources. The findings suggest the need for augmenting land conservation, introducing improved animal breeds and enhancing farmers’ capacity. These interventions ought to be supplemented with provision of credit services and follow up trainings.
