dc.description.abstract |
Trypanosomiasis a widespread constraint in livestock production, mixed farming and human health in Africa has
necessitated development of several technologies to ameliorate the effects of the disease. However delivery of
these technologies to farmers has been undertaken on trial and error basis without a proper strategy leading to
more failure than success and wastage of scarce resources. The purpose of this paper was to carry out an analysis
of transaction costs associated with the use of communal crushpen in tsetse fly and trypanosomiasis control
among smallholder cattle farms in Busia County, Kenya. The study utilized cross-sectional survey design and
was guided by the New Institutional Economics approach. Stratified and simple random sampling technique was
adopted to get 211 respondents. Data was collected by use of structured questionnaires and analyzed using
descriptive and inferential statistics. Conjoint results showed that price was the most important factor influencing
the farmers’ decision for crushpen use, accounting for 55.58%; distance accounted for 20.7% while trust
accounted for 14.6% and group affiliation 8.7%. It is recommended that crush pens should be close to farms,
managed by trustworthy people preferably belonging to farmers’ groups and charges levied for spraying the
cows should be within the reach of farmers. The necessity of developing affordable Tsetse fly and
Trypanosomiasis control methods in the war against Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis is supported by this study |
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