Large Scale Agricultural Investments and Its Impact on Gender Relations and Wellbeing of Small Holder Farmers: Evidence from Kilombero Valley in Tanzania (original) (raw)
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Enhancing rural livelihoods in Tanzania : A small-holder farmers' perspective
International Journal of Accounting and Economics Studies, 2017
Poverty reduction has been a difficult milestone for Tanzania to achieve despite recording remarkable economic growth over the past decade. This is because the attained growth is not inclusive, in that sectors contributing to this growth employ fewer people. Given the fact that agriculture continues to employ the majority of people in Tanzania, efforts to improve livelihoods should necessarily be geared towards transforming the sector. It is in this context that using a sample of 3,000 farmers from 13 regions of Tanzania; this Tanzania, this study set out to examine challenges facing farmers and their respective solutions following the sustainable livelihood framework. Findings show that improving farmers' livelihoods would entail concerted efforts by the government to avail to farmers, quality and affordable seeds, fertilizer, agricultural infrastructures, subsidies, extension services, markets, information alert, affordable loans, and areas for pastures. This implies that the government needs to allocate enough funds to the agricultural sector if farm-ers' needs are to be met. We note, however, that government's allocation to the sector has alarmingly generally been exhibiting a declining trend for the past four years. It is against this background that we strongly recommend that the government rethinks its position and prioritize the agricultural sector in its budget.
Leverage points for improving gender equality and human well-being in a smallholder farming context
Sustainability Science, 2018
How transformative processes could be facilitated to improve gender equality and consequently, human well-being, is a key question for moving towards a just and sustainable future. Focusing on southwestern Ethiopia where significant changes in formal institutions related to gender have occurred, we applied the concept of systemic leverage points. We show that changes in formal structures facilitated changes in perceived visible gender gaps, such as increased participation of women in public activities. These, in turn, played an enabling role for changes in community norms, and (to a lesser degree) triggered reconsideration of perceptions about women's capacities. Both women and men perceived more equal gender relations as being associated with better well-being at the household level. Our results highlight the important role of interactions between leverage points for gender equality, suggesting important insights can be gained by studying interactions, compared to when shallow (e.g., visible gaps) or deeper leverage points (e.g., social norms) are analyzed in isolation. Our study also demonstrated the general suitability of a leverage-points perspective in gender research, including as an analytical frame to complement gender transformative approaches.
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2015
Farmers' Organizations' (FOs) play a significant role as an institutional vehicle for promoting agricultural development through helping farmers solve common problems in relation to agricultural inputs, credit, technical knowledge and marketing of produce. All these services aim at improving farming activities and enabling them to gain economic benefits to sustain their well-being. Based on the above, this paper assessed the contribution of FOs to smallholder farmers' well-being in Kasulu district. Specifically, the study assessed farmers' perception towards FOs, identified goods and services accrued by farmers from the organizations, and the contribution of goods and services from the same to farmers' well-being. A cross-sectional research design was employed whereby data was collected from 160 randomly selected farm households. Primary data was collected using a prestructured questionnaire with both open and close-ended questions. Both quantitative and qualitative information was collected. Observations from the study showed that FOs contributed positively to their members' well-being. Generally, FO's members had a relatively higher income compared to the nonmembers, based on t-test analysis; the difference was shown to be statistically significant. Generally, the results indicated that extension services and the use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides were positively associated with a household's income and assets ownership. Therefore, it is recommended that, rural farm households be encouraged to form or join farmers' organizations as these have a great potential of solving their problems.
Female Labor Outcomes and Large-scale Land Investments in Tanzania
The current transformation of the agricultural sector in many African countries has been perceived to be connected to land resources and the quest to advance agriculture as a commercial enterprise. The main expectations in this agricultural transformation include increased productivity, job creation, and rural development. This paper examines to what extent this alleged transformation has delivered on its promises, particularly for rural women. We conduct comparative analyses using the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) dataset, complemented with a survey from two case studies of large-scale land investments (LLIs) in Kilombero district, Morogoro region, Tanzania. The finding from the study shows that the LLIs have no significant effect on agricultural wage. However, the results show that LLIs have a negative effect on the welfare of female-headed households located in communities with LLIs. Looking at the case studies, however, we find that female-headed households working in the LLIs earned slightly lower agricultural wage compared to those not working in the LLIs. This implies that the use of LLIs in Tanzania to drive agricultural transformation requires better targeting of potential beneficiaries.
Smallholder-based, sustainable, agricultural intensification is increasingly put forth as a development pathway that is necessary to improve farmer's livelihoods, enhance productivity and engender a surplus that can be used to feed growing urban areas across sub-Saharan Africa. The following article examines trends in yields for Africa's largest staple cropmaizeamong smallholder farmers in six regions in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, using longitudinal quantitative data collected in 2008, 2013 and 2017 in combination with qualitative data from nine villages. Substantial increases in yields are found only in Zambia, while yields are largely stagnant in Malawi and Tanzania. In the case of Zambia, however, there is a persistent genderbased yield gap. We use the qualitative data to explain this gap and find that gender-based differences in yields need to be understood in relation to local production systems, as well as the varied positionality of women, where the biases facing women who head their own households are different than for women living in male headed households. In policy terms, technologies that can promote intensification are different depending on these factors, even within the local context of particular farming systems.
Middle East research journal of economics and management, 2024
Although the role of gender play a great role in the livelihoods of greater portion of rural households in the study area, the participations level on the activities of the agricultural production is little focused. This study, therefore was designed to assess gender participation and integration constraints in Gedeo and Alaba Zones in southern Ethiopia. The study was designed in cross sectional design. The data were collected in two zones, 3 woredas, and 8 rural kebeles. Samples who randomly selected were 86 men and 69 women farmers a total 155 farmers were selected so as to collect the required data through triangulation of different tools, which are key informants interview, focus group discussion and household survey and the data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, participation index scoring and ordered logit analysis. Based on the data analysis result frequency of men and women participation in selected agricultural practices were computed. There were six gender participation factors evaluated in descriptive statistical tools, based on the respondents, 118(76.2%) respondents believed that community norm can affect the participation of gender in agricultural practice and 1(0.6%) respondent believed that cultural norms couldn't affected by community norm. The average task share of the household is 30%, 15%, 43% and 12% for men, boy, women and girl, respectively. Women and men performed larger share of the gender role in rural household as compared to boys and girls. The reproductive work of women in the household covered 67% of the total household care work. Generally the gender participation index was 73.8 which indicated that the gender participate on all agricultural activities but concerning to women it needs effort to amend the factors affecting women participation. Even though the gender role of boys and girls in selected agricultural commodities is very low, they were highly engaged in their academic persuasions in school and at home. According this statistical result household members spent agricultural labor hour in differently, as converted this labor share in to daily labor hours indicated that women, men, boys, and girls are spending 10, 7, 4 and 3 hours per day on average, respectively. Results obtained from the ordered logit model indicated that institutions, awareness level, opportunities to agricultural extension, credit access, education level and land size showed positive significant relationship with their gender participation in farming activities Women are just as efficient agricultural producers as men and can achieve similar yields when given access to resources, including training and services. Therefore, increasing the opportunities for women and youths can have a powerful impact on productivity and agricultural-led growth and are recommended for better rural development.
Gender Disparities and the Role of Women in Smallholder Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
International Journal of Science and Research, 2016
Gender equality is a basic human right that requires that men and women be treated equally with respect to resources, legislation and policies. Gender-based discrimination results in serious gaps in political, social and economic participation. In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture is the livelihood of nearly 70% of the economically active population. For the rural poor, agriculture is the main source of employment and income, although the income generated is low. A host of factors leading to low yields means that many households continue to be food insecure. High rates of hunger are strongly linked to gender inequality. The agricultural sector is underperforming in many sub-Saharan African countries, in part because women do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to become more productive. Women smallholder farmers in the sub-Saharan African region face numerous constraints. They may have access to land but very few actually own or have title to it; their plots tend to be less fertile than those belonging to men; they have fewer farm tools and equipment; and limited access to farm credit, inputs, technologies and information. In addition, women farmers lack access to improved seeds, reliable water supplies, markets, financing and insurance options, and moreover, suffer from unsupportive public policies. Furthermore, smallholder African women farmers often do not get paid for the farm work that they do, nor do they always earn and control the income from sales, a factor that may affect their incentives to effectively participate in agricultural production. Research also shows that development policies and practices often exacerbate the situation as they do not offer women farmers equal access to development resources, training and information, thereby limiting their opportunities and ability to contribute to agricultural development, food security and poverty reduction. The household and societal pay-offs to reducing women's constraints in productive activities are significant. Closing the agricultural gender gap would result in significant gains for the agricultural sector as well as society as a whole. Increasing the opportunities for women can have a powerful impact on productivity and agricultural-led growth. Women are just as efficient agricultural producers as men and can achieve similar yields when given access to resources, including training and services.
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2014
The paper presents a review of literature in gender mainstreaming in agricultural development. It begins by defining key terms related to gender mainstreaming, and then followed by the discussion of the historical background of gender mainstreaming. This is then followed by review of literature concerning the gender mainstreaming and agricultural development, and African perspective of gender mainstreaming and the current status of gender mainstreaming in Swaziland. The review ends by discussing the potential benefits that can be harnessed from mainstreaming gender in the country's agriculture sector and development programmes.
International Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2018
This study aimed at examining the effect of crop commercialisation on rural households' poverty in Tanzania. The household survey data was collected from a sample of 389 rural households. Commercialisation index was used to estimate the level of household crop commercialisation. The principal component analysis was used to develop a household welfare index which was then clustered to identify poor and non-poor households through cluster analysis, the method automatically guided the decision retaining two clusters by calculating the measure-of-fit that is Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). To examine the factors affecting the household poverty status, a logistic model was employed. Results revealed that the majority (65.6%) of the households are poor. The level of crop commercialisation is averaged to 66% indicating a commercialised farming practice. The results further showed that crop commercialisation, women participation in crop income allocation, off-farm income, access to extension services and household size significantly reduce household poverty while household head's age had an adverse effect. The study suggests that the small and medium agricultural processing units in rural areas should be given priorities and strengthened since they are crucial to promoting the level of commercialisation among rural households. Furthermore, in periods of sufficient and excess harvest, the crops trade restrictions with the neighbour countries should be eliminated to increase the level of commercialisation and earnings to the local rural farmers.
Agricultural intensification and gender in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia
2019
The SAIRLA-supported AFRINT IV project has been collecting data on agricultural intensification from 23 farming communities in seven regions in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia since 2008. Policies in all countries have a strong focus on maize intensification and also target women as recipients of subsidised farm inputs. During this time, data on maize shows that only in the Zambian region has there been a sustained increase in yields, but this has been tied to a persistent gender gap. In the other two countries, yields have been stagnant. In the case of Malawi this is explained by poverty, land fragmentation and a gradual depletion of natural resources. In the case of Tanzania, withdrawal of subsidy schemes for maize in combination with new commercial opportunities in rice and tree crops appear to be changing land use patterns.