[Tanzania] New study shows farming expansion key to scrapping rural poverty

from IPP Media

By Beatrice Philemon

High, sustained agricultural growth is needed for the reduction of rural poverty. The reason is farm output growth can be broadly shared, a Poverty and Human Development Report issued by REPOA indicates.

Unfortunately, agricultural production has not improved substantially for both food and cash crops, the report notes.

’’Similarly, productivity has remained low, especially among smallholder farmers who constitute the majority of agricultural producers in Tanzania and the quality of export crops has remained low relative to export crops produced by neighbouring countries,’’ the report laments.

A combination of low production, low productivity, and low quality of agricultural produce has significant limiting effects on rural growth and therefore on poverty reduction.

Furthermore, significant poverty reduction in Tanzania will depend on higher growth rates in the rural economy, particularly in the agricultural sector, is says.

The report suggests that the promotion of integrated production schemes should be considered as a promising strategy and these should involve co-ordinated access to improved inputs, extension services, and transportation, processing and marketing.

’’The promotion of integrated schemes of production involving access to inputs, technology and extension services, transport, processing and marketing should increase rural growth by ensuring the increased output and improved quality of products.’’ The report indicates.

The report proposes that efforts should be directed towards understanding and eliminating the barriers to smallholders that continue to inhibit the growth of productivity.

The objective is to transform the sector into one with high labour productivity and high quality outputs.

Specifically, the major aims should be to increase both the quantity of production through increasing the number of hectares under cultivation and their yields and the quality of production.

The report notes that the major factors contributing to the poor performance of the agricultural sector are the low level of education and literacy amongst smallholder farmers, exposure to variable weather conditions, price variations, limited investments and weak institutional arrangements.

These problems justify the consideration of involving smallholders in co-ordinated and integrated approach to production, including the establishment of out-grower schemes.

Crop production is the main activity for about 50 per cent of the smallholder households.

The majority of crop growing households consume what they produce, yet 70 per cent also sell some portion of their produce.

There are very low levels of processing and storage of crops beyond the household level.

Elaborating on tea, sisal, coffee, and tobacco production, it says that the production of tea, tobacco, sisal, and coffee has fluctuated at around 50 million tons per year, while paddy, beans/ pulses, and millet/sorghum has fluctuated at around half a million tons per year.

Maize and cassava production has been on an upward trend since 2001, at the same time the production of cotton, cashews and sugar cane has recorded significant jumps, with sugar cane production increasing significantly since 2001.

This is due to the privatisation of sugar cane estates and the adoption of the out- grower model of production, which began in early 2000.

The details show that tea yields from smallholders have been also consistently lower than from estates since the mid 1970’s to 2005, with productivity of tea estates increasing during the mid to late 1990’s, while that of smallholders plummeted.

This is also the case for other crops with production of maize by smallholders (2002/03) being 0.73 tonnes/hectare and of sorghum 0.43 tons/hectare which compares poorly with production by large farmers of 4.0 tons/hectare of maize and 2.7 tons/hectare of sorghum.

Currently Tanzania’s agriculture is driven mainly by smallholder producers and there has been low increases in agriculture production and insufficient improvements in quality.

There are 4.8 million smallholders cultivating about 44 million hectares in Tanzania, and 31 per cent of the heads of the households have no education, while 63 percent have some level of primary education, though only 20 per cent have completed Standard Four.