Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

Housing characteristics
The overwhelming majority (99 percent ) of farmers own their house. As shown in Table
5.62 the average value of a farmer household dwelling (value of residence and plot of land) is
MK 6,035. The value of the dwelling increases with levels of expenditure. The most common
types of dwellings are made of mud walls, earth floors, thatch or straw roofs, with no electrical
source for energy or lighting. The most prevalent source of drinking water is a borehole followed
by public wells. On average, households have to travel about half a kilometer to get water, about
8 km to use a telephone, and about 0.3 km to get to the nearest road accessible by a truck. The
characteristics of the dwelling structure and the households’ access to different amenities such as
sources of drinking water, access to a telephone or a main road, do not seem to vary a lot with
expenditure levels. The only exception is for brick or stone houses which are more likely to be
owned by better-off farmers. These also seems to be some gender differences in the quality of the
dwellings; male-headed households are twice as likely as female-headed households to have a
house made of brick or stones and the average value of a male headed household dwelling is MK
6,730 compared to MK 4,644 for female-headed households.
5.1.12 Sources of information and access to extension services
Smallholder farmers receive most of their agro-economic information from extension agents.
About two-third to 70 percent obtain information on seed varieties, fertilizer use and prices,
controlling pests and weeds, and crop production techniques from extension agents.
Approximately half of them also get information on prices, crop marketing and government
policies from extension agents. Other important sources of information are the radio, followed by
family and friends. The radio is more important for prices and changes in government policies
than for technological information. Because of the sparse population density in the North, the
extension agent to farmer ratio is higher in this region compared to the Center or the South.
The use of extension agents also seems to increase with farm size. This is perhaps because
farmers with a larger land area have a higher marginal benefit from meeting with an extension
agent than smaller farms or because extension agents visit bigger farms in general. Farmers are
visited an average of 17 times a year. Most extension agents visits are done with a group of
farmers, or the whole village. The type of information that extension agents provide include
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