Analysis of Vegetable Seed Supply Chain of Smallholder Farmers: The Case of Ada’a District, East Shewa Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

The vegetable sub-sector is one of the important sub-sectors of the Ethiopian economy. Consequently, the return from vegetables per unit area is several times higher than from major cereals. Hence, this research attempted to analyze factors affecting the vegetable seed supply chain system in Adea district, East Shoa zone, Oromia Region of Ethiopia, focusing on onion crop. A household survey with a pre-tested structured questionnaire and a key informant interview with checklists were used to collect primary data. The data was collected from 150 farmers and analyzed using STATA software. To address these objectives, multiple linear regression models were adopted. Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimation shows that education level, sex of the household head, age of the household head, farm experience of the household, oxen ownership of the household head, area of vegetable and income of the vegetable significantly affect the vegetable seed supply chain system. The regression result indicated that the price of onion seed was negatively related to the quantity of onion seed used. Similar to the case of onions, the area allocated to tomatoes also had a positive impact on the quantity of tomato seed used by the sample households. However, unlike their significant impact on onions, both age and education had an insignificant impact on the quantity of tomato seeds used by the sample households. There is a special need to develop vegetable sector-specific guidelines for the development of the seed supply chain in Ethiopia. This calls for the transformation of the seed supply system from an informal to a more formal one through system establishment and capacity development.