DETERMINANTS OF MARKETABLE SURPLUS OF CHICKPEA IN ETHIOPIA: (The case of Anchar district

Abstract

The objective of this research paper is to assess the determinants of marketable surplus and marketing outlet chosen by farmers producing chickpea in Achar district. The paper employed a commodity approach marketing to examine the factors that affect Chickpea marketable surplus. Respondents were selected based on probabilistic simple random sampling techniques. Accordingly, a sample of 94 respondents was taken. To collect relevant data, structured interviews were applied. To analyze the data both descriptive statistics (for analyzing market outlets) and econometrics models (for analyzing determinants of marketable surplus) were employed. Determinants of marketable surplus were analyzed by using multiple linear regression model. Accordingly yield, land size, variety and crop quality were significantly affected marketable surplus of chickpea. Finally the descriptive statistics result confirmed that a fairly weak preference of chickpea buyers by smallholder farmers. Therefore, farmers need to learn not only how to produce but first how to expand the size of market to improve profitability of farmer’s production. In another word there is also a need for policy interventions in the product quality control as the development of market is possible only when quality based marketing systems that offer better differentiated prices for products that differ in observable quality parameters