Abstract:

This study focused
below potential due to
factors such as pests and diseases, low soil fertility and low plant populations. To manage
these problems, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technologies, were developed and
demonstrated on-farm to the farmers. It was further indicated that the IPM technologies
is to maximise output, resource poor farmers produce competing crop enterprises
constrained by land, labour, capital, technology and diseases among others for income and
In this their daily food requirements. study, effort was made to find out if cowpea
farmers in Eastern Uganda were optimally allocating their resources in the production of
the five major crop enterprises including cowpeas. Using face-to-face interviews, data
were collected using a structured pre-tested questionnaire and analysed using descriptive
not allocating their resources
optimally and thus were not maximising returns from crop production. It was shown that
implies that farmers in Eastern Uganda
Results further show that reductions in cowpea prices and increases in capital reduced the
overall gross margins by percentages of less than 13%. implying that an optimising farmer

cowpea production and developing optimal farm plans for cowpea production systems in
is safe to operate under these challenges. It was, therefore, recommended that farmers in
on examining the allocation of farm resources by farmers engaged in
Eastern Uganda. Earlier studies revealed that cowpea yields are
were operating way below their optimal values.
were more profitable than farmers’ traditional methods. Since a farmer’s major objective
a farmer could improve annual gross margins when the existing crop enterprise mixes are
The optimisation results clearly show that farmers were
statistics, enterprise budgeting and linear programming.
re-planned to a tune of 171.20% (IPM farmer) or 286.07% (non-IPM farmer). This
the area take up the resource use plans to optimally allocate their resources and improve
their bargaining power for better prices and/or participate in markets with higher prices in
order to improve their returns.