Abstract:
Increasing market participation for smallholder farmers has a big potential to uplift living
standards of poor household through increasing production and consumption. Although,
smallholder farming made 95% of total crop production in Ethiopia, they are exposed to a
marketing bottleneck that hinders benefits from their produce. The objective of this study was to
identify determinants of smallholder teff farmer decision to participate in output market and level
of marketed output. The study used data on 190 respondents that are collected through structured
questioner from Gena-Bossa districts in Dawro Zone. The descriptive statistics and Heckman two
stage econometric methods were employed to analyze the data. Out of sampled household, 75%
participated in teff output market, while the remaining 25% not supplied teff output in survey time.
The farming activity were the main source of income and livelihood in study area. Among
interviewed, about 21.58% have off-farm activity option but the remaining 78.42% of respondent
have no other alternative even in dry season, in which no agricultural bustle takes place. About
89.5% of teff farmers’ have access to extension services while only 30% obtain credit; 24.74%
have access to price information and 28.42% of household have membership to producer group.
The significance of coefficient of inverse Mill’s ratio ( ) indicates the presence of self-selection
bias and the effectiveness of applying Heckman two stage model. The results of study show that
the smallholder decision to participate in output market were positively influenced by size of land
holding, availability of family labor force, education status of household head, accessibility of
credit service and access to market price information. On the other hand, size of family member,
sex of house hold head being female and distance to market place discourage probability of teff
farmer market participation decision. Moreover, the second stage estimation reveals that, the
education status of house hold head, size of farm land, amount of teff crop produced, accessibility
of market information, the size of family labor force and being member to farm cooperative
increase the quantity of marketable output, whereas, large number of family size decline the level
of teff crops marketed. The policy that assist poor farmers in obtaining market skills; create
affordable credit service; strengthen community based producer groups and capacitating the
females socially and economically in the community believed to minimize the problems
encountering small farmers in a way to market their crop.
