Profitability of smallholder pig farming in Tharaka-Nithi county, Kenya

Abstract

Pig industry sustains livelihoods of many families in Kenya. Pig rearing has been one of wellestablishedindustry in Kenya following growing export markets and increasing number of health conscious consumers. Pig production if efficiently managed has great potentials for increasing protein supply in Kenya. Smallholder pig farms in Tharaka-Nithi County have been facing varying and dismal profits. The main objective of this study will be to establish which institutional arrangements and management factors affect the profit efficiency of small-holder pig farmers in Tharaka-Nithi County. A multi-stage purposive sampling technique will be adopted to collect cross sectional data of eighty (80) smallholder pig farmers in Maara Constituency by the use of semi-structured interview schedules. The work will employ Data Envelopment Analysis to come up with profit efficiency rankings among the farmers and stochastic frontier profit function will be used to analyze the factors that affect profit efficiency. The data will be processed using STATA and DEA Frontier packages. The findings could be useful to the stakeholders of the pig industry sub sector to formulate policies pertaining to pig enterprise inputs, marketing issues and financial products and also can establish benchmarks which can be used as a package for enhancing and stabilizing profit efficiencies of smallholder pig farmers which in turn could help improve the Kenya economy