Abstract:
Household participation in the out-grower scheme and investor farm employment has the potential of improving livelihoods of participating households. However, scientific debates on the socio-economic determinants of households’ participation in the out-growers scheme and investor farm employment have not been conclusive and the number of out-growers dropping out of out-grower scheme remains significant. This paper aims at examining the socio-economic determinants of household participation in the out-growers and investor farm employment. The paper adopted a cross-sectional research design whereby exploratory sequential research strategy was adopted. About 376 respondents were involved in the survey. Qualitative data were collected through checklist of questions were analysed using content analysis while quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The results indicate that demographic variables (older age and household headship), group membership, access to credit, distance from household premises to investor and asset ownership were important predictors of household participation in the out-grower scheme (P < 0.05). The Results indicate further that demographic variables (younger age, household headship and household head marital status), household asset, household income and land size significantly influenced household participation in the investor farm employment (P<0.05). Therefore, household participation in the out-grower scheme favour youth household head, Male-Headed Household (MHHs), household in groups, household with higher land size, HHs with less access to credit and household with fewer assets. Participation in investor farm employment favours those households with older age, FHHs, low income, few assets, married, and households with large land size. It is recommended that there is a need for providing sugarcane technical training to out-growers. Also understanding of the factors that affect household to participate in the out-grower scheme and investor farm employment and how they relate to participation decision should be an important part in designing interventions aimed at improving production uptake
