The Future of Smallholder Farming in Eastern Africa - Uganda ...

Sheep 1992
2.1 a
a, b, c
15.4
3.5 b
3.6 c
(5.5)
(15.9)
(7.7)
(8.9)
Sheep 1997
2.5 a
a, b, c
13.1
3.6 b
2.9 c
(6.5)
(21.6)
(7.6)
(6.3)
Sheep 2001 3.2
7.6
4.0
2.0
(7.3)
(16.5)
(10.7)
(4.8)
Source: Survey data, 2001.
Note: Values with the same superscript in a row are significantly different between
groups using Kruskal-Wallis test; n=171; s.d. = standard deviation.
Users of CBAHWs, however, registered a 7.3 percent increase in goats for the same
period, despite reductions for users of the other health delivery channels. These reductions in
goats were 27.9 percent, 9.6 percent, and 26.1 percent for veterinary staff, drug shops, and
mixed service users, respectively. This finding could be explained by the fact that CBAHWs
more often attended to goats than to other animals (Table 4). On the other hand, the finding
could be purely a sample phenomenon. For the mixed service users, the order of preference
of use of these services was not investigated.
Table 18 summarizes the level of income and land held by the respondents stratified by
animal health delivery channel. Users of veterinary staff had significantly higher aggregated
crop income and total income than did users of other channels. On average, they also had
larger (but not significant) parcels of land than users of other health channels (p = 0.05).
Larger livestock herd or flock size and land owned are often associated with wealth.
Therefore, users of services of CBAHWs had significantly less wealth than users of trained
veterinary personnel. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in income level
between users of the other health delivery channels. Given that the farmers share a similar
habitat, it appears that the choice of a health service channel is influenced by, among other
factors, the wealth status of livestock keepers. Past studies have established that clients of
veterinarians are usually better resource endowed (Wamukoya, Gathuma, and Mutiga 1995).
Similarly, Holden (1997) found that richer farmers tended to use CBAHWs more frequently
than poor farmers, when users and nonusers of CBAHWs were compared. Her assessment,
however, considered only CBAHWs and did not compare users of CBAHWs and with users
of veterinarian services.