Abstract:
Although the 'government has on several occasions tried, to promote modern commercial oriented agriculture in Uganda, many pig farmers still rear pigs using less productive traditional methods A study was carried out from February-May 2015 in Semuto Sub County to find out the factors hindering the adoption of intensive swine production; with major emphasis put on socio-economic, health factors and the prevailing swine rearing systems. Two villages from four parishes Were randomly selected and 12 pig-rearing households per village were also randomly selected. The study concluded that the socio-economic factors. hindering intensive production significantly included 'high feed costs (p=6.01947E-o6) insufficient capital (P=O.0432), inaccessibility of high yielding pig breeds (p=0.003838) insufficient veterinary and extension services however statistically, this was not significant (p=0.l087). Lack of general knowledge regarding the system. and poor pig marketing structures were also pointed out by 3.13% and 8.33% by the farmers respectively.
Among the health factors, 26.04% of respondents pointed out fear of outbreak of disease in a confined pig population as the reason why they were not adopting intensive swine production and this had a statistical significance of P=0.0432. The prevailing pig production systems were the extensive-type (70.5%), semi intensive system (8.9%), and intensive system (18.8%).
RECOMMENDATIONS
It was therefore recommended that the government of Uganda or MAAlF should develop policies and guidelines on credit accessibility, financial and agricultural extension services that favour or tailored to the rural-poor if they are to take off through pig production as an industry.
