Browsing by Author "Amongin, Lydia"

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    CROP DIVERSIFICATION AND PROFITABILITY AMONG SMALLHOLDER RICE FARMERS IN DOHO IRRIGATION RICE SCHEME – BUTALEJA DISTRICT
    (Gulu University, 2023) Amongin, Lydia
    Rice which has gained a lot of prominence both as a food and cash crop globally is a promoted crop in most of Uganda’s irrigation schemes. The smallholder rice farmers who are beneficiaries of these schemes have been indoctrinated to monocrop rice on a double annual season. Commercially sustainable farming practices are becoming increasingly important as market forces, consumer tastes, and climate change continue to alter agricultural enterprises. Recognising the critical role smallholder rice farmers play in growing the economy while ensuring global food security, this study therefore sought to examine the effects of crop diversification on the profitability of rice enterprises of these farmers. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a multi stage sampled respondent size of 385 smallholder rice farmers. Descriptives such as frequency counts, means, and percentages were used to characterize the scheme’s smallholder rice farmers, the Tobit regression model analysed the factors that influenced crop diversification while the two stage least squares helped ascertain the influence crop diversification had on profitability of rice enterprises. Proportion of scheme land to total land, level of education and gender of household head, access to extension services, access to market information through radios, integrating rice with roots or perennials and cost of irrigation were found to impact intensity of crop diversification. While crop diversification was found to be positively associated with rice profitability, other instrumental variables like farmer experience at the scheme, access to credit, extension services from non government entities, growing ‘super’ rice variety, selling output to rice processors, growing legumes and roots also had an influence on rice profitability. According to this study, crop diversification can lessen smallholder rice farmers' susceptibility to environmental hazards and market swings, thereby increasing overall profitability of their rice enterprises. Policymakers and development practitioners looking to create policies that support sustainable farming techniques and raise smallholder farmers' standard of living would find great value in the study's insightful contributions.