The willingness of Kenyan farmers to join Cashew Marketing Cooperatives

Barbora Růžičková

Bachelor's thesis

Abstract:

In the past, cashew cooperatives worked very successfully in the coastal parts of Kenya. However, nowadays, there are no cashew cooperatives present in these regions. This thesis, therefore, aimed to investigate Kenyan smallholder cashew farmers’ willingness to participate in cashew marketing cooperatives and under which terms they would be willing to join. Qualitative data were formed according to the Theory of Planned Behavior and were obtained from personal interviews with farmers and key informants and focus group discussions with women’s groups. The results showed the main benefits of forming a cooperative are social capital in terms of sharing advice and knowledge and economic benefit in higher selling prices leading to improved living standards. The main obstacles to forming cooperatives are a lack of trust among the farmers and bad experiences from the past. This region also lacks a natural leader that would establish a group furthermore the economic side of things. Farmers are not willing to pay fees or any other charges in the cooperatives. In addition, farmers do not feel skilled enough to be part of cooperatives, even after being trained on the cashew trees' overall care. Recommendations are included at the end of the thesis with ideas on improving the situation with smallholder cashew farmers and cooperatives. The key recommendation is to find natural leaders who could try to establish cooperative groups and motivate and guide others.

Keywords

Agricultural cooperatives, Willingness to join, Motivational factors, Theory of Planned Behavior

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 15. 4. 2022

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: Ing. Jiří Hejkrlík, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Bachelor programme:
International Cooperation in Agricultural and Rural Development