Abstract

The study aims at determining factors affecting the access to agricultural information by smallholder tea farmers. Tea sub-sector is Kenya's second largest foreign exchange earner after horticulture. The small holder farmers own about 80% of the land under tea but produce about 60% of made tea thus realizing less yield per unit area as compared to their large scale counterparts. Tea Research Foundation of Kenya in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture has developed several technologies aimed at improving both yield and quality of tea. The technologies include high yielding clones; selective application of herbicides; insect, pest and weed control; fertilizer recommendation rates and harvesting practices. Small holder farmers however continue to realize low declining crop yields. It is generally known that access to information is a potential avenue for increasing yield. A study was carried out to determine access to information by smallholder tea farmers in Bureti District, Kenya. A combination of purposive, multistage and proportionate random sampling was used to get 170 respondents. Data collected was managed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 15 and Probit Model was used to estimate the parameters that determined access to information. Off-farm income, education level, household size, marital status and time spent at tea buying center significantly influenced access to information by small holder tea farmers. The study in conclusion emphasized the need of information to small holder tea farmers so as to facilitate increased yield.

Keywords:

Access, Kenya, information, smallholder,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.