Satisfaction Rating of Coordination Mechanisms by Dairy Producers around Community Milk Cooling Plants in Western Kenya

Abstract

A number of studies have used value chains approach to look at critical constraints that limit the growth of milk production and marketing. However, existing literature is limited on case studies that have first considered establishing the satisfaction levels of support services provision to individual producer households so as to inform accurate constraints identification for sustainable policy and technical intervention. This study undertook to identify and analyze coordination mechanisms that had been developed to support producer households around community milk cooling plants using factor analysis approach. Primary data from 273 households selected through simple random sampling method was collected using a semi structured interview schedule. From the results,  the overall satisfaction mean score  rating was 5.4 with feeds provision and clinical services had the highest satisfaction mean scores respectively. From factor analysis, three factors were generated, and were named as support for training, support for inputs and support for marketing respectively. Cronbach’s α test results confirmed reliability for support for input and training factors. It was concluded that though efforts had been made to provide support services to producers, service provision was inefficient and uptake still low in some services. It is recommended that in order to enhance the proportion of milk that entered the community milk cooling plants, pricing policies based on grade of milk should be put in place so as to attract more producers to join and supply regularly to the cooling plant at premium prices and also to make the producers benefit from the services being offered

Key words: Community Milk Cooling Plant, Factor Analysis, Producers, Support Services