Economic Development
RECODA works with small scale farmers to promote improved livelihoods and increased resilience.
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.
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
Food and Nutritional security
Definition of food security is combined with nutrition security
RECODA applies the definition by the World Food Summit in 1996: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." The definition describes what are known as the four pillars of food security: accessibility (having food purchasing power), food availability (ability to produce food), utilization (eating habits or consumption), and stability (resilience or sustainability) of the availability.
Project designing and implementation
Most projects implemented by the organization apply the RIPAT approach whereby designing of the project starts with undertaking the situation analysis in order to understand the situation before start of project. The projects then consider the food and nutritional security of the communities and also the enhancement of income and this leads to the selection and implementation of a wide range of relevant technologies (basket of options) for crops and livestock production. The projects apply agroecology principles (terrestrials), which ultimately enhance food security and income for smallholder farmers.
The basket of option developed ensures that it takes into consideration the nutritional needs of the communities but also the environmental capacity to support nutrition. Training on nutrition for all project participants is undertaken in order to enhance good health and this includes also, utilization of local foods. Hence, the projects engage in nutrition sensitive agriculture and considering the available resources together with training and demonstration, build the capacity of the community to understand and step-up nutritional security