Agriculture Reference
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owners of the cars were sometimes not available. In addition, availability of transportation
helps reduce long market distance constraint.
l. Road infrastructure (RDINFR
): Road infrastructure is measured by the accessibility of
road networks that are adequate to farmers to be able to travel to the nearby or furthest
market and their conditions. The poorer the road condition, the harder it is for farmers
to travel and transport their products and according to the findings of this study, road
infrastructure is one constraint that is hindering the marketing process.
m. Membership of farmer association (ASSMEM):
This variable was deemed important
because in Lesotho there is a well-developed system of traditional cooperation which small
farmers draw upon to address labour bottlenecks and other production constraints. The
letsema
has been in operation for centuries and entails farmers working in groups to address
a problem by collective action. It was also observed that some farmers join the Districts
Farmer Association (DFA) which serves other objectives including extension. Through this
Association small farmers are able to access inputs and credit. The work of Ostrom and
others show that customs and social conventions designed to induce cooperative solutions
can overcome the collective action difficulties and help achieve efficiency in resource use
(Nabli and Nugent, 1989).
8.4 The model and analytical framework
In order to conclude as to the extent to which horticulture production was constrained,
a suitable response or dependent variable should be specified and examined for possible
variations under alternative scenarios. The most popular and intuitively appealing variable
in this regard is farm revenue. The impact of key institutional variables on the farm revenue
can then be examined as a basis for judgment one way or another. But farm revenue is an
inconclusive guide in an environment where farming is not completely oriented to the
market, making it difficult to accurately monetize the benefits from farming. Also, there is
the notorious tendency of traditional households to give unreliable information about their
production performance depending on their perception of the purpose of the investigation.
However, when people are asked to simply state whether or not they are satisfied with a
particular situation, experience shows that they tend to provide more reliable information.
For this reason, the study decided to model production satisfaction as a binary choice
variable such that when a farmer reports satisfaction with the previous year's production
it is scored one (1) or zero (0) otherwise. Specifying such a model is no different from
the approach taken by D'Haese
et al.
(2003) in analyzing how participation decisions are
influenced by a set of institutional factors in the former Transkei region.
Of the large number of variables obtained through the sample survey, the institutional
factors can be identified as: standard and grading, land access, transport availability,
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