Factors influencing crop production intention among farmers in Afgooye district, Somalia

Food aid remains one of the most common responses to emergency situations given to support lives and livelihoods in areas or region experiencing a food shortage. As of May 2018, about 2.7 million Somalis did not meet their daily food requirements, with more than half a million on the verge of famine. They urgently needed immediate humanitarian assistance in the form of food to keep them from falling into crisis. It was estimated that there were 300,000 malnourished children under 5 years old, including 48,000 who were chronically malnourished and facing high risk of illness and death. Somalia has been facing many problems with livelihoods, climate change, epidemics, lack of agricultural inputs, all seeming to have no end. Despite heavy speculations of the impact of food aid on local agricultural production, there has been lack of empirical evidence on the need to understand famers' intention to produce more food. The present study was undertaken primarily to identify and evaluate factors influencing farmers' intention on crop production in Afgooye district, Somalia. The study was also aimed at examining relationships among existing factors that influence sustainable crop production. The study was guided by an integrated conceptual framework predominantly developed from Theory of Planned Behavior in which a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 selected respondents using multistage cluster sampling technique. An IBM SPSS Version 23 software was employed in data analyses in which descriptive, correlation and multiple regression analyses were applied. The descriptive results revealed that majority of farmers were males from Somali tribe, middle age and had both formal and informal education. Multiple regression analysis revealed that dependency, costs of farm inputs and epidemics were factors that affected farmers’ intention towards agricultural production. At the conclusion of the study, it was observed that epidemics, cost of farm inputs and dependency were at moderate and high levels, respectively. When all was said and done, the study established that intention towards crop production among Somali farmers in the wake of food aids occurred because they were not prepared to embrace the use of new crop production technology, nor did they envisage starting crop production using improved technology. The study proposes that government and donor organizations or agencies support farmers with subsidized farm inputs, control measures against major epidemics and new farming technologies with efficient extension services, in attempts to reduce farmer’s dependency on food aid programs and prepare them to be self-reliance in food production.

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