The contribution of shea nut business to the small-scale farmers house hold earnings in Abia sub county, Alebtong district.

Abstract

The importance of shea nut free to the people of Uganda has been overlooked considering both the economic and environmental uses of the tree and therefore efforts have to be made to find out or investigate its production by the farmers as the shea nut tyee production stil.l remains low. It would be worthwhile to investigate the contribution of viteiiaria pavadoxa (shea nut) business to the small scale house hold earnings of farmers in Uganda but specifically to Abia sub coun.ty Nebtong District. The specific research objectives were 1, to examine the contribution of viteifaria patadoxa (shea nut) to small scale farl rs cf Abia Sub County, Alebtong district. 2, to determine the annual income earned by s all scale holder shea nut business fanners. 3, to identify the major challenges faced by small scale farmers and associated opportunities. in marketing of' vitellaria paradoxa. Tw parishes that bad the highest number of shea nut farmers in Abid sub-county were selected, list of the households of all shea nut farmers in each of the parishes were obtained and a simple random sampling technique was used to select 30 farmers from each parish, in each household, the household head was interviewed in his/her absence or upon his/her request, any other member who is knowledgeable about the household was interviewed. Descriptive statistics of means and percentages were used to describe the data linear regression was used to determine how educational levels marital status, age, state of heading family and experience influenced the income levels earned by small scale farmers in Abia sub county Results showed that Majority of the respondents (65%.) were married while only 25% were single and the rest were either widow or divorced. According to the respondents, all the shea nut tree managed in the area were naturally gifted by nature and not all the respondents had shea trees in their farms but only the few and the rest gets their own through sales from markets and within the households. And therefore, the state of being married gave positive correlation towards level of income earned. In conclusion, the contribution of shea nut Vitellarta paradoxa as a business had wide range of benefits; however, challenges are influenced by other factors within the communities and they were "charcoal burning, seasonality of the Shea seeds, lack of information or ignorance" seasonality of the shea seeds emerged as the key challenge faced by the shea farmers during sales. As a recommendation, the government should support the Shea butter enterprise through skill enhancement program and formation of associations.

KEY WORDS: contribution, shea nut tree, economic tree, small scale farmers, earnings and households.