Abstract:
The performance of rural smallholder dairy agrienterprises in Kenya is very critical as it
contributes to welfare improvement of rural people especially the youth and women. Despite this acknowledgement, the farm productivity of rural dairy agripreneurs is persistently low. Entrepreneurial orientations and utilization of agribusiness support services have been viewed as a catalyst for improvement of agrienterprises performance. This study sought to determine impact of agripreneurial orientations on resilience and performance of dairy agripreneurs in Murang’a County, Kenya. The specific objectives were to determine; dairy agripreneurs’ preferences for production, animal health and marketing support services, factors influencing the usage of Agribusiness Support Services (ASS), effect of agripreneurial orientation mediated by ASS and effect of ASS on performance of smallholder dairy agripreneurs in Murang’a County. A multistage sampling method was used to select a sample of 682 dairy agripreneurs. Through a Cross-sectional
survey, data were collected using a standardized questionnaire, discrete choice experiment (DCE) and analysed through a number of novel econometric approaches. Dairy agripreneurs had higher preference for group marketing, curative services and artificial insemination support services. However, dairy agripreneurs have less preference for business plan training service. In relation to willingness to pay (WTP), dairy agripreneurs were more willing to pay for group marketing (KES 8797.91/month), artificial insemination (KES 2816.01/month) and curative services (KES 2577.62/month), but were not willing to forgo KES 2411.29 per month for business plan training service. Secondly, the findings revealed that education level of household head, number of adults in the household, experience in dairy farming, land size, livestock type, number of cows owned,
milk yield, price of milk, access to contract, type of road and level of buyer trust were the major factors that affect the likelihood of utilising agribusiness support services among dairy farmers. Thirdly, the findings indicate that there is positive and significant relationship between future orientation (β = 0.395, t=12.699, p=0.01), risk-taking orientation (β = 0.088, t=2.743, p=0.01) and market orientation (β = 0.136, t=3.609, p=0.01) on agripreneurial resilience. However, it was found that social orientation had a negative relationship with agripreneurial resilience (β = -0.166, t=3.966, p=0.01), while ASS had no mediating effect on the relationship between agripreneurial orientation and agripreneurial resilience. Finally, the results show that utilization of combination of ASS significantly increased milk productivity and income per year for smallholder dairy agripreneurs. The study recommended increased linkage on access of ASS and entrepreneusrhip capacity building programmes to smallholder dairy farmers
