Abstract

Rwanda remains trading very low volume of beans inside the country and across borders thereby becoming unable to meet national and international demands. This is exacerbated by low market participation of bean growers. This study assessed factors that influence market participation and extent of participation among bean growers in Nyanza district. Probit model was used to analyze the factors influencing market participation among bean growers while the extent of market participation was analyzed using Tobit model. The probit results indicated that factors that positively and significantly influenced the probability of farmers to participate in output market were bean quantity produced, market experience, and access to credit while factors that negatively and significantly influenced market participation decisions included distance to nearest market, age and access to off-farm activities. Tobit results revealed that factors that were found to have positive statistical significant impact on the extent of market participation were bean quantity produced, marketing experience and selling price. Contrary to earlier expectation, land size was found to have negative significant impact on the quantity of bean marketed. This is possibly an indication that the increased household’s participation in output market is a function of farm productivity too.

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