Determinants of Market Participation among Smallholder Common Bean Farmers in Eswatini (Former Swaziland)

Purpose: Promoting small-scale farmers’ market participation is perceived to be a motivation of transforming peasantry subsistence farming to commercialization for improved rural livelihoods especially in developing countries like Eswatini. Despite efforts by the government and other stakeholders the transformation process is too slow or stagnant mostly on non-traditional export food commodities including common beans in Eswatini. The drivers of small-scale common bean farmers ‘market participation and level of market participation in Eswatini are not known, hence this study.

Objectives: The main objective of the present study is to find out the determinants of market participation among the smallholder common beans farmers in Eswatini.

Research Methods: This study used secondary data accessed from Eswatini Agricultural Development Enterprise (ESWADE) under the Smallholder Market Lead Project was used. The data was cleaned and a total of 164 common bean farmers were considered for this study. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics and Heckman two-stage selection model.

Findings: The results generated indicate that most respondents were females (63%). The results further show that there is a significant difference of 1.396 in the number of family size helping in farming between participant and non-participants. About 84.8% of the farmers depend on rain to water their beans. Gender, knowing size of land, method of watering and household farm labour size were found to be the determinants of common bean farmer’s choice and intensity of participation in the market.

Recommendation: It is recommended that farmers should consider irrigating their crops, participate fully in farming activities and know their size of land because these factors has been proven to increase the intensity of market participation of bean farmers and the government should take initiative to provide more extension officers to conduct effective training and incentives that will encourage the middle age group to participate in sugar bean farming.

Originality/ Value: This paper highlights the determinants of market participation among the smallholder common beans farmers in Eswatini as well as establishes the socio-economic characteristics of the small scale common bean farmers.