Abstract:
Despite the increase in area under coffee in Kenya in the last decade, productivity has been on the decline. Numerous production
technologies have been developed through on-station research but there has been limited on-farm research to assess the impact of
these technologies at the farm level. On the other hand, smallholder farmers are endowed differently and this would positively or
negatively affect the adoption of recommended technologies and hence coffee productivity. -is study was carried out to evaluate
the effects of socioeconomic factors and technology adoption on smallholder coffee productivity at the farm level. -e study
employed stratified random sampling where 376 farmers were randomly sampled from six cooperative societies which had been
preselected using probability proportional to the size sampling technique. -e effects of socioeconomic factors and technology
adoption on coffee productivity were analyzed using the stochastic Cobb-Douglas production function. -e study revealed that
off-farm income, access to credit, type of land tenure, and land size had significant positive effects on coffee productivity.
-erefore, coffee farmers should be encouraged to diversify their income sources and to embrace credit financing, as the
government reviews land use policies to avail adequate agricultural land. -e study further revealed that the adoption of
recommended application rates of manure, fungicides, and pesticides had significant positive effects on coffee productivity. -e
adoption of these technologies should therefore be enhanced among small-scale farmers to improve coffee productivity at the
farm level.
