DETERMINANTS OF BEEF CATTLE MARKET PARTICIPATION AND ITS IMPACT ON FARM HOUSEHOLDS’ WELFARE: THE CASE OF TULO DISTRICT, WEST HARARGHE ZONE, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Assuring food security in Ethiopia is one of the key priorities for sustainable development. In line with this, the government of Ethiopia has designed policies to enhance marketing system of the livestock sector to improve the livelihood of rural households. However, in Ethiopia, empirical evidence of the relationship between participations in the beef cattle market and rural households’ welfare is less and it has not been systematically studied in the study area. Thus; this study aims to identify the major determinants of smallholder farmers’ beef cattle market participation decision and its impact on the household welfare in the Tulo District. A Stratified random sampling technique was applied to select a total of 241 sample households. Both primary and secondary data were collected. The descriptive statistics and econometric model were used to analyze the data. The logit model result showed that, sex of household head, production experience, and livestock owned, extension visit, access to off-farm income and access to market information positively affected the participation decision, but the distance from the nearest market negatively affected beef cattle market participation decision. The average treatment effect on the treated of the propensity score matching model result indicated that, the mean annual income and yearly consumption expenditure per adult equivalent of beef cattle market participant were increased by 54.6% and 27.99%, respectively. The finding of the study depicted that, the beef cattle marketing participations would contribute in improving the income and consumption expenditure of rural households. The opportunities of market participation identified were good agro-ecology for beef cattle fattening, increased of meat food by urban dwellers and government consideration. Conversely, brokers’ intervention and little number of traders were identified among the major constraints. Based on the key research findings, it recommends that, improving human capital, smallholder asset building, institutional services, the rural road infrastructure and marketing system could enhance market participation