Although the above mentioned advantages of finger millet over maize have been identified by researchers in the past, little efforts have been made to rigorously assess the potential and the constraints in the production and marketing of finger millet or other traditional food crops. This dissertation assesses several aspects of finger millet production and marketing, including the adoption of improved finger millet practices, the marketing and selling prices, the profitability of the crop, and the technical efficiency in the production of finger millet. Since finger millet has been mainly replaced by maize in the research area, maize is used as the benchmark crop for comparisons in most of the analyses. A review of existing research and research gaps is given before specific research questions are formulated.
1.2.1 Realizing production and productivity increases
Western Kenya belongs to the most densely populated regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, were a growing rural population has to make a living from increasingly scarce land resources. Improved cropping practices are necessary to boost yields and avoid further land degradation. In addition, the technical efficiency with which the inputs are used has to be improved (Crowley & Carter 2000). If policy makers want traditional food crops like finger millet to play a role in the future of the Kenyan farming sector, an adoption of improved cropping practices and an increase in technical efficiency need to be realized in the production of these crops as well.
Identifying the factors that influence an adoption of improved cropping practices in developing countries has been in the focus of researchers since many decades. Over time, a range of factors such as education, wealth, and farm size have emerged as variables that potentially influence the adoption of improved practices (Feder et al. 1985; Feder & Umali 1993; Knowler & Bradshaw 2007).
More recent literature has focused on the role of social networks and social learning in the adoption process. Both, formal and informal social networks have been shown to positively affect the adoption of improved practices (Besley & Case 1993; Foster & Rosenzweig 1995; Langyintuo &
Mungoma 2008; Wollni et al. 2010). While there has been a lot of research on the adoption of improved cropping practices in the production of main cereals like maize (Kaliba et al. 2000; Groote et al. 2005; Feleke & Zegeye 2006; Sauer & Tchale 2009; Mignouna et al. 2011), very little efforts have been made to understand adoption processes in the production of traditional cereals. Only a few studies focus on the adoption of improved sorghum and pearl millet varieties (Nichola 1996;
Matuschke & Qaim 2008; Cavatassi et al. 2011). To the best of our knowledge, there is no study that provides empirical information on the adoption of improved finger millet practices. Although many factors influence the adoption of improved practices similarly across different crop types, there are presumably significant differences between the adoption processes for main staple crops and marginalized traditional food crops. For example, social networks can play a more important role when formal sources of information and inputs are scarce (Wu & Pretty 2004; Matuschke & Qaim 2009; Conley & Udry 2010).
Besides the adoption of improved cropping practices like the use of modern inputs, a technically efficient use of these inputs is essential to obtain high yields. The emergence of literature dealing with technical efficiency in the context of small-scale farmers in developing countries started in the 1960s, when Schultz (1964) formulated his “poor but efficient” hypothesis. There is now an extensive strand of empirical literature that assesses the technical efficiency in the farming sector.
Many studies find low levels of technical efficiency (Kaliba 2004; Tchakounte et al. 2012) with a high variability of efficiency estimates across farms (Goyal et al. 2006; Backman et al. 2011). These
findings underline that an assessment of the factors influencing technical efficiency is important.
Existing literature has identified factors such as market access, group membership, and education to have an influence on technical efficiency (Phillips & Marble 1986; Bravo‐Ureta & Pinheiro 1997;
Binam et al. 2003; 2004; Rao et al. 2012; Wollni & Brümmer 2012). However, very few studies assess technical efficiency with a specific focus on traditional food crops. Whether or not gender has a significant influence on technical efficiency remains inconclusive in the scientific debate. A literature review by Quisumbing (1996) concludes that most studies do not find a significant influence of gender on technical efficiency, On the other side, Quisumbing (1996) also underlines that most efficiency studies suffer from methodological shortcomings in their gender analysis. Against the background that female farmers often face particular constraints in their access to productive resources, more empirical results on the effect of gender on technical efficiency would help to design policies that assist female farmers to improve their production systems. This is of particular importance in the case of traditional food crops, which are often considered as “female crops” (Doss 2002).
1.2.2 Improving market access and profitability
Small-scale farmers often face high barriers to enter agricultural markets due to a deficient rural infrastructure and other factors that increase transaction costs (Key et al. 2000; Barrett 2008;
Shiferaw et al. 2008). Market barriers are particularly high in the case of high-value agricultural markets like export vegetables due to high quality and standard requirements (Reardon et al. 2009).
The sales of food crop surpluses therefore constitute an important source of income for small-scale farmers in developing countries, especially for the smallest and least endowed farmers who do not access high-value agricultural markets or other sources of income. The income derived from food crops can also be of particular importance for female farmers, since women often face higher barriers to access high-value agricultural markets than men (Zeller et al. 1998).
A number of studies have been conducted to assess the factors that help small-scale farmers to overcome market barriers and obtain higher selling prices are assessed. It has been shown that producer marketing groups (PMGs) or other forms of collective action can decrease transaction costs, increase the farmers’ bargaining power, and improve the farmers’ access to services and information (Roy & Thorat 2008; Kaganzi et al. 2009; Narrod et al. 2009; Fischer & Qaim 2012b;
Wollni et al. 2010). However, farmer collective action is not necessarily leading to improved market access and the success of farmer collective action depends on a range of group and product characteristics (Markelova et al. 2009). It remains furthermore unclear in how far farmer collective action improves the situation of female farmers. Collective action is often seen as a way to overcome the particular disadvantages that female farmers face. However, recent research suggests that women are often marginalized in male dominated farmer groups and lose control over their crops (Fischer & Qaim 2012a). At the same time, women groups have been shown to be disadvantaged in terms of market access and marketing prices when compared to male dominated farmer groups (Barham & Chitemi 2009). Despite the large amount of literature dealing with smallholder market access, empirical evidence on the marketing of traditional food crops remains scarce. Against the background that the income derived from traditional food crop marketing is of particular importance for the most disadvantaged farmers, marketing constraints and determinants of selling prices for traditional food crops have to be better understood.
Ultimately, the aspects of traditional food production and marketing that are assessed in the present dissertation are decisive for the profitability of traditional food crops. The crops’ economic potential in comparison to the economic potential of main staple crops is of crucial importance for the farmers’ cropping decisions. Small-scale farmers encounter various challenges to achieve profitability. Especially female farmers are often hampered in obtaining profitability due to a constrained access to in- and output markets as well as farm productive resources such as high quality land (Zeller et al. 1998; Quisumbing & Pandolfelli 2010; Croppenstedt et al. 2013; Kilic et al.
2013). Although there are studies that compare the profitability of cash crops and traditional
cropping systems (Rourke 1974; Boateng et al. 1987; Lukanu et al. 2009), we are not aware of any study that is comparing the profitability of main cereals and traditional cereals.