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Adoption and impact of integrated agriculture aquaculture on income and productivity of smallholder fish farmers in Kenya

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Abstract

This paper examines the impact of integrated agriculture aquaculture (IAA) adoption on productivity and net farm incomes among smallholder fish farming households in Kenya. To control for selection bias, the paper uses an endogenous switching regression model (ESR) on farm-level cross-sectional data from 427 randomly selected farmers from four counties of Kenya. Results show that the adoption of IAA reduces the volatility of net yields and the risk of crop failure while significantly improving farm productivity and farmer income. Other factors found to be associated with an increase in farm productivity and farmer incomes are access to credit, secure land ownership, farmer education, number of economically active members in a household, and farm enterprise diversification. The policy implication is that integrated agriculture aquaculture is a worthwhile agricultural innovation that should be promoted by the national and sub-national governments through, say, improving farmer access to tailored credit facilities, providing appropriate farmer education and training, and linking the farmers to providers of the requisite services and input. While deliberately targeting integrated agriculture aquaculture, the governments should also pay attention to other sector-wide productivity and farmer income-enhancing measures such as access to agricultural credit, security of land tenure, less labor-intensive technologies and agricultural diversification.

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Data availability

The datasets used for the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

Notes

  1. https://www.kobotoolbox.org/.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Chrisphine Nyamweya for providing valuable comments and feedback on the earlier draft of this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the World Bank through the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP) Reference Number KCSAP/COMP.2/VOL.1(116).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Kenyatta University, Kitui, Kenya

    Fonda Jane Awuor & Ibrahim Ndegwa Macharia

  2. Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, P.O. Box 1881, Kisumu, 40100, Kenya

    Fonda Jane Awuor

  3. Faculty of Law and Department of Economics and Development Studies, University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

    Richard Mbithi Mulwa

  4. Liebig Centre for Agroecology and Climate Impact Research, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

    Richard Mbithi Mulwa

  5. Taita Taveta University, P.O. Box 535-80300, Voi, Kenya

    Maurice Juma Ogada

Authors
  1. Fonda Jane Awuor
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  2. Ibrahim Ndegwa Macharia
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  3. Richard Mbithi Mulwa
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  4. Maurice Juma Ogada
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Contributions

All authors contributed substantially to the study’s conception and design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript revision, and final approval.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fonda Jane Awuor.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Institutional review board statement

The study was conducted in accordance with an approval granted by the Kenyatta University Ethics Review Committee (protocol code PKU/2290/I143 on 12th August 2021 and the Research License 295677 granted by the National Commission For Science, Technology and Innovation.

Informed consent statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 380 KB)

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Awuor, F.J., Macharia, I.N., Mulwa, R.M. et al. Adoption and impact of integrated agriculture aquaculture on income and productivity of smallholder fish farmers in Kenya. SN Bus Econ 4, 18 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43546-023-00607-0

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