Abstract:
Legume production and use has continually experienced low adoption by small scale farmers despite their potential benefits as found by researchers and other stakeholders. This is attributed to the high degree of heterogeneity in small scale farming systems. The variation in socio economic characteristics such as resource endowment, education level, family size, age, gender, farmer experience and production orientation influence the choices of legume technologies to adopt and practice. Therefore this research sought to explore various socioeconomic niches for legume uptake and intensification among small holder farmers. The study was conducted in three farm types that were based on resource endowment and developed through participatory wealth ranking process. These were high resource, middle resource and low resource endowed farm types. Multistage random sampling was used to select 378 households which participated in the survey. Socioeconomic data in legume production was collected using a structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics using means, frequency counts and percentages were used to group data collected. Inferential statistics using Analysis of variance was used to determine any significant difference across farm typologies and across study sites. Chi square and correlation tests were used to determine the socioeconomic factors with a significant influence on legume production. Gross margin was used to analyze the profitability in legume production. The results showed that 53% of the study population belonged to farm type three, whereas 32% and 15% of the population belonged to farm type two and one respectively. The study found out that intercropping was the common form of legume production where 95.6% of farmers intercropped legumes with cereals or other crops. The rest practiced legume mono cropping. Male headed households composed 80.2% of the study population while only 19.8% of households were female headed. In addition 42.2% of farmers were middle aged, 32.9% were old aged and young farmers formed 22% of the population. Farmers in Suna Wasimbete and Central Kamagambo owned larger parcels of land and allocated more land to growing legumes than their counterparts in Ibeno and Marani. On average 60.3% of farmers lacked title deeds to the land they cultivated while the other 39.7% possessed title deeds. The study findings also indicated that majority of farmers (47.2%) were educated up to primary school level. The mean family size was six persons across all sites. Average legume yield in the study population was 235.2 kg ha-1; although variations of yield occurred across all sites, the difference was not significant at p<0.05. From the factors analyzed only age, land size, family size and land tenure significantly influenced area under legume production. No factor had a significant influence on legume yield. Gross margin analysis indicated that legume production was profitable. The study identified potential niches for legume intensification focusing on specific farm types. This study concludes that legume intensification niches are farm type dependent and production level is influenced by select socioeconomic factors. Therefore for increased uptake and production of legumes, farm types and identified socioeconomic characteristics should be considered in any legume promotion initiative
