Abstract:
Bean is an important source of proteins and income for poor resource households. However, the yield of beans has remained very low in comparison to yields obtained under ideal management conditions. This necessitated the examination of socio-economic factors influencing bean yields among smallholder farmers in Itirikwa sub-county, Adjumani district northern Uganda. A total of 80 farmers were randomly selected from the study area and the data was subjected to descriptive statistics and regression analysis using IBM SPSS (version 20). The descriptive study revealed that majority of the respondents (82.7%) were practicing farming and had no other off farm jobs, most of them were 31-40 years of age (31%). Also, 82.5% and 53.8% of the respondents had bean gardens ranging from 1 to 2 acres and sourced seeds for planting from local market respectively. While 65.0% of the farmers didn't have access to credit, 90.7% actually had access to market information. From the study, majority of the farmers (20.4%) attained yields of either 70 - 137kgs or above 200kgs per acre. The results further show that bean production per acre could cost about 525,000/=, total revenue was 616,500/= and the profit was 915,000/= per acre on average, the price for beans on average was found to be 4500/= per kilogram sale showing a positive margin at 22.9%. The results indicated in regression analysis of bean yield and several socio-economic factors stood out. Notably, age shows a positive statistically significant relationship with the variation in bean yield, Education level, Family size and fertilizer usage and farming experience shows negative coefficients but statistically significant in influencing the variations in the bean yield, whereas gender and land ownership are statistically not significant.
It is therefore recommended that the government’s effort to support agricultural mechanization for increased acreage and productivity be strengthened through private public partnership to quickly reach the smallholder farmers.
