Determinants of smallholder farmers participation in seed producing cooperatives in Southern Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia

This research attempted to examine smallholder farmers’ participation in seed producing cooperatives with the objectives of assessing factors affecting farmers’ participation and identify the determinants of participation in seed producing cooperatives in southern zone of Tigray, Ethiopia. Both probability and non-probability sampling techniques were employed to select 192 sample households. Interview schedule with respondents and focused group discussions were employed to gather qualitative and quantitative data for the study. Descriptive statistics like frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviations and inferential statistics such as t-test and c2-test were employed to see mean difference and association, respectively, between both participation categories. The result of the descriptive statistics shows that, from the total fourteen variables, eleven of them were significant at 1, 5 and 10% probability level between the participation categories. Binary logit model was employed to identify the determinants of participation. The result of the model shows that smallholder farmers’ participation in SPCs was significantly influenced by household head’s age, sex, distance to SPCs office negatively and participation in field days, participation in trainings and family labor endowment positively. Thus, enhancing the institutional support services through creating village based seed producing clusters, organizing trainings, field days and using labor saving pre-harvest and post-harvest technologies would contribute to improve smallholder farmers’ participation in SPCs. Key words: Seed, participation, seed producing cooperatives, binary logit.