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Tanzania agriculture

Land of opportunity: Should Tanzania encourage more large-scale farming?

Isis Gaddis's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.

Like most developing countries, more than 80 percent of the poor in Tanzania are to be found in rural areas. Nearly all of them are active in the agriculture sector as laborers or owners of a small piece of land that they cultivate for a living. In this context, land is a vital asset for food security and survival. In parallel, global population growth, rapid urbanization, and increases in incomes have resulted in a sharp increase in demand for agricultural products worldwide, leading to an expansion of cultivated area and leading investors to go out in search of new farmland.  The global search for farmland has intensified in sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania. 

Why Tanzanian farmers don’t sell what they produce?

Jacques Morisset's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.

About three out of four households report to have agriculture as their main activity. Even urban households are still involved in crop production.

Indeed, agriculture is an important sector for Tanzania contributing up to 26 per cent of GDP. Typically, farmers produce to feed their families but they also expect to gain revenues by selling their output. When farmers make more income from the sale of their produce this leads to more development in the rural areas which ultimately impacts positively on the overall economy. This is what has been surmised from the success stories of predominantly agricultural countries, such as Malaysia and Vietnam.