Socioeconomic Factors that Influence Smallholder Farmers’ Membership in a Dairy Cooperative Society in Embu County, Kenya

Abstract

Smallholder dairy farmers produce the bulk of total marketed milk in Kenya. Dairy cooperatives are one of the avenues for these smallholder farmers to harness markets for their milk. The paper sought to find out the socioeconomic factors that would influence these farmers to join dairy cooperatives in Embu County, Kenya. Systematic random sampling and simple random sampling were used to select a total of 236 smallholder farmers. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics and the binomial logit model. The results show that age, gender, household size, herd size, distance to the nearest market, access to credit and milk sold influenced the decision to join cooperative societies. The study recommends further study whether cooperatives are improving the incomes of smallholder farmers.

Keywords:Dairy cooperative society, smallholder farmers, Binomial logit model