Chapters authored
Factors Affecting Household Goat Farmers’ Market Participation and the Extent of Commercialization
This paper assessed the factors influencing farmers’ choice to participate in selling goats and the extent of goat commercialization in Zululand district of Kwa-Zulu Natal Province in South Africa. Data were collected through questionnaires administered to 175 selected goat farmers in five local municipalities within Zululand district. A Probit model was used to estimate the factors affecting farmers’ choice to commercialize while Tobit regression model was used to analyze the factors affecting the extent of commercialization. The Probit results show that the factors that positively and significantly affect farmers’ choice to commercialize are gender, education level, quantity of goats, and type of marketing channel. The Tobit results revealed that factors that have a positive significant effect on commercialization are gender, level of education, experience in goat farming, and time of the year. The paper recommends that government support programs should be promoted to achieve high goat production and establishment of formal marketing goat sector to promote commercialization. Furthermore, information about goat nutritional attributes must be effectively shared with the society to change the negative stigma towards goats thus increasing the demand for goat and goat products, thus increasing farmers’ market participation and promoting commercialization.
Part of the book: Goat Science