The influence of extension services on milk production among dairy farmers in South Central Uganda

Abstract

In Africa, extension programs have been conceived as a service to extend research-based knowledge to the rural sector to improve the lives of farmers. However, today’s understanding of extension goes beyond technology transfer to facilitation, beyond training to learning, and includes helping farmers form groups, deal with marketing issues, access inputs and other services and partner with a broad range of service providers and other agencies. The main objective of this study was to determine the extent to which of extension services and input usage influence milk production among dairy farmers organized in south central Uganda. A descriptive study design was adopted in which over 200 participants were selected in multi stratified random sampling techniques. Data was gathered from farmers using a structured questionnaire. On average, the surveyed households produce 8.1 litres/cow/day and 68.4 litres of milk in total per day. Considering service and Input costs, farmers on average spend 224,630 Uganda shillings and the cost of the services and inputs does not influence its usage considering that the most expensive services or inputs are accessed by majority of the respondents (81%, 97% and 82% for curative treatment, Deworming and acaricides respectively) while advisory and feeds which are the cheapest were used by a small proportion of respondents the results suggest that service/input usage is driven by need rather than cost. Overall access to extension services explained 25.5% of the variations in milk production per cow per day. Results from the linear regression model revealed that at no extension services received or accessed, the surveyed farmers would only produce 4.6 litres per cow per day keeping other factors constant. The results further reveal that access of extension services from cooperative societies and private service providers at least once every month has a potential of increasing milk production per cow per day by 3.7 and 2.9 litres respectively keeping other factors in the model constant. The study revealed that farmers organised in cooperatives where accessing more services and receiving from more than three sources than non-members. Majority of the farmers do not access extension services monthly an indication that farmers are still facing challenges of limited access to extension services. The study recommends a multi stakeholder approach to the delivery of extension services using dairy cooperatives as entry points to reach dairy farmers