Determinants of Smallholder Farmers’ Vegetable Crop Commercialization in East Hararghe Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Transforming the subsistence oriented production system into a market oriented production system as a way to increase the smallholder farmer's income and reduce rural poverty has been in the policy spotlight of many developing countries, including Ethiopia, particularly in the East Hararghe Zone. The objective of this study was to identify determinants of household level output side commercialization of vegetable crops in the East Hararghe Zone. A multi stage sampling procedure was used to select 230 sample vegetable producers by using probability proportional to population size. Descriptive statistics and econometric models were used to analyze data. The findings further revealed that the mean household vegetable commercialization index HCI was 89.21 . The results from the Tobit regression model revealed that commercialization of vegetable crops was determined by the distances to the nearest market center, access to market information, livestock ownership, cooperative membership, and the area allocated under vegetable production. This study recommended that improving market access, organizing farmers into groups to have better access to agricultural inputs, providing market information through networking and institutions, and clustering and intensification of vegetable crop production are therefore crucial in enhancing the commercialization and level of vegetable commercialization in the study area. Solomon Ayele | Kibret Ketema | Hussein Abro "Determinants of Smallholder Farmers' Vegetable Crop Commercialization in East Hararghe Zone, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-7 | Issue-6 , December 2023, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd59881.pdf Paper Url: https://www.ijtsrd.com/other-scientific-research-area/other/59881/determinants-of-smallholder-farmers'-vegetable-crop-commercialization-in-east-hararghe-zone-oromia-regional-state-ethiopia/solomon-ayele