Identifying Homogeneous Target Groups of Dairy Producers: An application of combined principal component and cluster analysis

Research aimed at developing appropriate interventions to assist smallholder dairy producers requires a clear understanding of the overall systems environment. Smallholder dairy systems are shaped by production characteristics and technologies, but also by farm/household resource constraints and the market environment. For example, farms in poor agro-ecological zones yet close to urban centres may compete effectively for markets against distant farms located on better land, and their production strategies will reflect that market orientation. The appropriate characterisation of dairy producer farm/households should thus consider this multiplicity of factors, so that resulting research priorities will be more likely to address the factors to which producers themselves are responding, and ultimately to yield the desired impact. This paper describes the characterisation method used to identify patterns among smallholder dairy farm/households in Kiambu district in the highlands of central Kenya, and then from among them a relatively homogeneous target groups of dairy producers. The approach used differs from previous methods by combining principal component and cluster analysis to allow incorporation of a greater range of variables.