The study seeks to establish why some smallholder horticultural famers in Chihota communal areas market their produce in communal markets which are known to generate less revenue for any given quality and quantity of produce than urban formal markets. It uses primary data collected from 119 farming households randomly selected from four villages that were selected on the basis of horticultural intensity. MLE technique through logit analysis is used to establish the determinants of smallholder horticultural farmers’ exclusion from formal urban markets. The results show that while diversification and household size reduces participation in urban markets, having own transport, input use, land size, age of the household head and access to information increase farmer participation in urban markets. Policy to improve SHFs participation should thus increase specialization, transport availability, input use and information access to SHFs.