What is the challenge?
Farming systems for small-scale farmers in many areas of Tanzania are characterized by mixed farming, whereby crops and livestock are produced together. However, the farming system is collapsing due to the population pressure, land degradation, and increased droughts and/or floods due to climate change, leading to unreliable rainfall amounts and patterns. This leads to escalating poverty and food insecurity, whereas the demand for food is going up. Additionally, productivity is very low for many reasons, amongst which is the limited information and knowledge of existing technologies that can enhance agricultural production and heal the severe environmental degradation. Upon production, the markets are limited since the perspective of the market is quite narrow.
Quality
Intervention
The implementation of community economic development programs is done using the RIPAT approach (www.ripat.or.tz), where growth of small-scale farmers is mainly through enhanced productivity. Careful community mobilization and sensitization is done to facilitate the communities to identify and utilize locally available resources and opportunities, and this is coupled with the selection of crop and livestock value chains.
The programs are agricultural, with the following components:
- Agroecology intensification in crop and livestock production with crop-livestock integration and incorporating environmental regeneration and conservation. Considers the 10 elements of agroecology (FAO, 2014).
- Improved crop and livestock production, which embraces climate-smart agriculture (agro-ecological) technologies: intensification, diversification, and integration
- Implementation of different value chains for crop and livestock production
- Post-harvest management, including value addition, utilization, and processing
- Marketing using the Farmer Market School (FMS) approach