Abstract:
The emergence of pig keeping in Uganda is a recent phenomenon and, as a result, there has been little systematic research on the factors influencing pig production, therefore; the study that was conducted from March to April 2015 sought to assess the socio-cultural, economic and political factors that influence swine production. Multistage Random sampling technique was used to complete the-list of 97 households who were interviewed using semi structured questionnaire.
Questionnaire data was entered into Statistical Package for Social Scientists version 20 for analysis. The research established that 72.16% of the respondents noted that their cultures accept swine production, while 100% of the respondents revealed that people engaged in swine production were Christians. 72% of the respondents did not consume pork which was attributed to the vast number of taboos most especially religious taboos which constituted 5.3.6%. 78".4% of the respondents revealed that farmers keep local swine' breeds. The research revealed that 63.9% of the respondents established that there was available market for pigs and almost all people (73.8%) engaged in the marketing were Christians. Most of the respondents (83:5%) noted that there were no policies geared towards improving swine production, 63.5% of the respondents revealed that there were no associations dealing in swine production, while 64.7% of the respondents noted that majority of the politicians say nothing as far as swine production is concerned. From the finding of the study it was concluded that there was a significant influence of the strong social attachment of people most especially Islamic religion, economic factors like lack of capital and land plus lack of policies geared towards accelerating swine production
Basing on the information above, it was recommended that in order to meet the increasing demand for meat, sensitization of the people extending of credit to farmers intending to engage in swine production and enacting of policies geared at accelerating swine production will be important to boost swine production.
