- Title
- The contribution of small scale livestock farming to rural household income in the King William's Town area
- Creator
- Mbangcolo, Nomalungisa
- Subject
- Farms, Small Livestock farms Rural poor
- Date Issued
- 2018
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MAgric
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13018
- Identifier
- vital:39432
- Description
- The Eastern Cape Province have high numbers of livestock but high poverty rates remain very high. This study therefore, aimed to determine the contribution of smallscale livestock farming to rural household income in the King William’s Town area in five rural areas. Literature shows that the livestock sector contributes 40 percent of global value of agricultural output and supports the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people. The data collected for this research were both quantitative and qualitative and cross-section design was employed for the research. The study used both simple random sampling and availability sampling to select 125 sample households, 25 respondents from each village. Descriptive statistics was used in the analysis of demographic and socio economic characteristics of households where graphs and tables were used to present the relevant information. Probit regression model was used to determine factors influencing the decision to practice livestock production and marginal analysis was calculated to determine the effect of changes of individual variables. For the assessment of the contribution of small-scale livestock farming to household income Propensity Score Matching (PSM) model was fitted. Results show that the highest percentage of livestock kept by households in 5 villages is 56 percent for poultry and the lowest percentage is 2 percent for pig. The main source of income for many households in the study area was the income from pensions and grants but livestock farming is also contributing to household’s income through income generated from sales of livestock for customary events such as traditional rituals and celebrations, lobola, funerals and weddings. Many of the households have secondary education and the reason might simply be that in olden days’ parents had no money to pay school fees of their children and that limited children to go further with their studies. The results of the marginal effects estimates for the probit model suggest that changes in the number of livestock sold would have important effects on household incomes. There are various challenges that livestock producers are facing in their production and the major challenge that households are facing is parasites and diseases as they decrease number of livestock kept by households. Parasites and diseases suck blood, causing the animals to become weak and sometimes resulting in high mortality rate. It is recommended that livestock producers should be made aware of the impacts of various challenges that affect livestock farming through awareness creation programmes and suggest solutions to overcome those challenges.
- Format
- 99 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Science and Agriculture
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
- Hits: 484
- Visitors: 590
- Downloads: 212
Collections
UFH Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Nomalungisa Mbangcolo Dissertation LATEST 13 APRIL 2018.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |