Smallholder farmers' preferences for public expenditure priorities to support maize productivity: evidence from a best–worst scaling experiment in western Kenya

Understanding how smallholder farmers want public resources allocated is essential for designing effective agricultural policies, especially in the maize sub-sector, where public interventions often compete for limited fiscal resources. This paper determined smallholder farmers’ preferences for enhancing maize productivity in western Kenya. Using survey data from 1,531 smallholder farmers, the study applied a best–worst scaling experiment in which farmers evaluated seven policy options across seven choice sets. Count analysis was used to rank aggregate policy preferences, while latent class modeling was used to identify heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences across classes. Results show that farmers strongly prefer improving access to soil-testing services, followed by increasing the quantity of subsidized fertilizer available to smallholder farmers, providing low-interest, unsecured loans, and increasing the number of well-trained and well-resourced public extension agents. Lower-ranked options included creating more market opportunities, improving access to agricultural lime, and improving rural roads and bridges. The latent class analysis further revealed heterogeneity in the preferences of smallholder farmers in western Kenya. The findings highlight the need to align public expenditure decisions with farmers’ expressed priorities, particularly when agricultural budgets are limited, and to design policy interventions that respond to the constraints farmers consider most urgent.