Abstract:
Small farms make up 85% of farms worldwide. Similarly, in Kenya, the
agriculture sector is dominated by smallholder farmers. To overcome constraints
imposed by small units and for sustainable development, smallholders often
organise themselves into groups or farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) to
access services. They exploit elements of social capital; social networks, norms
and trust to enhance cooperation for collective actions. It is often assumed that
social capital attributes among farmers’ groups are exploited for positive
collective actions such as access to credits and the sale of aggregated produce.
Social capital attributes, however, differ from one farmer organisation to
another. This study evaluated levels of social capital attributes among farmers
from value-chain-linked groups. The predictive value of the social capital
indicators on the desired outcome of collective actions was investigated. Based
on a retrospective study design, interviews were conducted on 72 farmers drawn
from 9 FPOs with 215 members. Attitude scales ranked 1 to 5 were used to
gather the opinions of participants on the attributes. Participants were sampled
by purposive and multi-stage sampling schemes. Single-sample Wilcoxon test
was used to analyse strength of each attribute among participants. Median value
for indicators of social trust, social participation, norms, common vision and
social networks were significantly higher than ‘neutral,’ P< .05. Collective
actions in inputs-acquisition and produce-selling did not differ significantly from
‘neutral’ (P > .05). The mean for social capital attributes had strong predictive
ability on collective actions as tested by Spearman’s Rank analysis using SPSS;
R2 = .382, P = .000. The collective actions in learning, inputs-purchase, produceselling, price negotiations and market-information seeking could be predicted
from the social capital attributes evaluated. It is recommended that stakeholders
build capacity of FPOs, particularly for collective actions in inputs-acquisition
and marketing of produce for sustainable development
