Abstract:
Sweet potato is one of the world’s highest-yielding crop in tenns of production per unit area, exceeding that of major cereal like rice. In Kenya, sweet potato production has been on the rise with the acreage under sweet potato rapidly increasing in recent years. World Vision introduced 7,800 sweet potato vines in Poro ward in 2010 and 2011 to 5 agro-pastoralists groups to, bulk and share with others to enhance food and nutrition security at household level. The main problem amongst agro pastoralists was low production of the crop. The purpose of the study was to investigate the perception of agro pastoralists towards influence of social and economic factors on sweet potato production. The study investigated three independent variables, namely influence on social factors, economic factors. The dependent variable was sweet potato production. Descriptive survey design was used to conduct this study with a sample size of 100. Data was collected through questionnaire administered to 100 agro pastoralists, through Focus Group Discussion (FGD) of opinion leaders and Key Informant Interviews (KII) of extension agents. Experts in the Department of Applied Community Development Studies determined the validity of research instruments. A pilot study was carried out with agro pastoralists in Lodokejek ward to detennine reliability of the research instruments where reliability was 0.746. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequency distributions. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse the data. The study found that 63 percent of the respondents did not have any formal education. While 91.9 percent of the respondents indicated to have received sweet potato vines from World Vision only 43.56 percent of the population planted sweet potatoes for four years. Contrary to initial studies on social factors, community traditions and norms did not hinder sweet potato production — rather, low crop acreage was attributed to prolonged drought and use of vines as livestock feeds. This indicates that agro pastoralists valued livestock more than sweet potato production. Further the study found that only few agro pastoralists were trained on agronomic traits of the sweet potatoes and the perception of extension agents was that the crop was still new. These factors could have potentially limited uptake. This study concludes that although sweet potato is a multipurpose crop and has potential to improve food and nutrition security for agro pastoralists, Sambum agro pastoralists still depend on livestock for their livelihood. However, to increase adoption, the study recommends exploring the potential of a dual-purpose sweet potato crop that could be used for human consumption and livestock feeds
