The impact of access to agricultural services on maize productivity in Uganda

Abstract

The study examined the influence of access to agricultural services on maize productivity in Uganda. The study was motivated by the fact there are low maize yields and yet the government has continuously increased funding to the agricultural sector through providing agricultural services to the maize farmers. The hypotheses tested were: access to credit services does not significantly influence maize productivity, access to extension services does not significantly influence maize productivity and access to markets does not significantly influence maize productivity. The multiple linear regression analysis was used, with a sample size of 36,060 households, to examine these influences using the 2008/2009 Uganda Census of Agriculture (UCA) data, collected by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBoS). Results revealed that access to credit services leads to an average percentage increase in maize productivity by about 6.7%, access to extension services increase maize productivity by about 0.2% and also that access to markets leads to an increase in maize productivity by about 0.4%. Both access to credit and access to markets were found to be statistically significant at 5% level (P>t = 0.000) and access to extension services was found not be statistically significant at 5% level (P>t = 0.685). The model was found to be a best fit (F (3, 29892) = 26.26, Prob > F = 0.0000) with an R-squared=0.68. The study concluded that access to credit significantly influences maize productivity, access to markets significantly influences maize productivity and access to extension does not significantly influence maize productivity. The study recommends that there is need for government to strengthen measures for farmers to access credit through farmer membership groups, VSLS, farmer banks, need by government to employ more extension workers to cover the largely unreached areas at the village levels and the central government should work together with the local governments in establishing maize produce markets in each sub-county in order to reduce the distance farmers take to reach the markets and through group marketing under farmer groups