Impact of Agricultural Input Subsidy Programs on the Food Security of Poor Households Residing in Meru County, Kenya

Abstract

Food security has emerged as a top challenge that affects millions of Kenyans. Statistics from the National Drought Management Authority estimate the population in Kenya suffering from food insecurity as 4.1 million individuals in 2021. Food security challenge in Kenya is greatly reliant on poor conceptualization and implementation of robust programs like Agricultural Input Subsidy Program. Despite the efforts made by the government including the implementation of Agricultural Input Subsidy Program, food shortage has remained an unresolved challenge in Kenya and especially in Meru County. The purpose of this study was to establish the effect of government agricultural input subsidy programs on the food security among poor households residing in Meru County, Kenya. The study sought to establish the following objectives: determine the social-economic effects of the Agricultural Input Subsidy Program on food security among poor households residing in Meru County, Kenya; assess the effect of fertilizer subsidies on food security among poor households residing in Meru County, Kenya and determine how training of farmers on the use of agricultural input subsidy program subsidies affects food security among poor households residing in Meru County, Kenya. Available literature was reviewed to inform conceptualization and instrumentation in this study. This study adopted positivism paradigm followed by mixed research designs covering cross-sectional descriptive survey and explanatory designs. Structured questionnaire with close-ended questions was used to gather information from respondents. The study targeted 100,345 poor households from Meru County out of which 398 respondents were sampled through stratified random technique. The analysis was conducted through Statistical Package for Social Sciences guided by means and standard deviations, correlation, and regression. The study established that fertilizer subsidies (β=0.629) had greatest effect on food security of Kenya’s poor households residing in Meru County followed by training of farmers (β=0.397) and lastly social-economic effects (β=0.186) respectively. The study concludes that government agricultural input subsidy programs are significant predictors of food security.