Drivers of youth participation in groundnut value chains in Tororo and Nwoya Districts, Uganda

Abstract

The agriculture sector remains the backbone of the Ugandan economy. It presents employment opportunities for the youth and yet it remains unattractive to the youth. This is because they prefer service sector jobs to farming which is left to the older generation. The study’s general objective was to analyze factors that could increase youth participation in agricultural value chains. The study specifically set out to establish the incentives and disincentives for youth participation; determine the factors influencing youth participation at each node; and the extent to which youth participation in the groundnut value chain responds to incentives. Quantitative data was collected using a questionnaire from 413 randomly selected youth aged between 18-30 years. Qualitative data was collected using the Photovoice method where 15 youths were selected from each district using stratified sampling. Descriptive statistics such as percentages were used to analyze the relationship between the youths’ socio-economic characteristics and their participation in the groundnut value chain. The results showed that among the youth participants in the groundnut value chain, the males were more than the females and those whose parents’ main occupation was farming were more than those whose parents were mainly non-farmers. The percentage of youth participants was higher for those: with access to land; belonging to farmer groups; with access to agricultural information; and those influenced by gender stereotypes in their communities. It was also found that the youth participants were slightly younger and owned more land than the non-participants. The study, through the photovoice process, found that the six main incentives for participation in groundnut value chains were: the benefits of farmer group membership; the influence of parents’ occupation; short payback period; collaborative farming with spouses; the desire to afford formal education; and good transport infrastructure. The disincentives were found to be: involvement in tedious processes; time poverty that affects young women; poor yields; post-harvest losses; inadequate storage facilities; and unavailability of efficient processing equipment. Further, the youth non-participants also indicated that they would participate in agricultural value chain activities if incentives such as; access to financial services, more land, ready market, affordable agricultural inputs, and agricultural training; favorable prices of groundnuts; and machinery and equipment were in place. The Multinomial Logit analysis for objective 2 found that youth would choose groundnut production over processing if they had more agricultural training, and more access to agricultural inputs, land, and financial services. Youth would choose groundnut trade over production with more market availability. It was found that having easier access to joining farmer groups would encourage youth to engage in groundnut production over the other nodes. A Tobit model was used to analyze the relationship between incentives and the extent of youth participation in groundnut value chains. The results showed the time a youth spends on groundnut value chain activities is likely to decrease as they grow older and that male youth are likely to spend more time in the value chain than females. It was also found that participation is likely to be higher among youth: whose parents’ main occupation is farming; with more access to land, who belong to farmer groups, and those closer to the nearest market. The study concluded that if the found incentives are put in place and the disincentives experienced by the youth are dealt with, youth participation in groundnut value chains can still be increased and the non-participants can start investing in agricultural value chains. The study, therefore, recommended providing deeper agricultural trainings and facilitating easier registration of farmer groups among youth with a passion for farming, as well as providing standard processing and storage facilities through the registered farmer groups.