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Contract farming has received renewed attention recently as developing economies try to grapple with how to transform the agricultural sector and its associated value chains. This book examines different contract arrangements for selected crops, applying both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to examine how contract farming affects smallholders and value chain dynamics in Tanzania.

Tobacco has been grown in Tanzania since the 1950s and remains a designated strategic crop. As part of a transformation strategy, the government has turned its attention to strengthening farmer cooperatives. This paper examines the role of producer cooperatives in mediating between smallholder farmers and tobacco-processing companies. The paper traces the transition from public marketing boards to private sector predominance and contributes to an understanding of the dynamics within contractual arrangements between lead firms and farmers. A survey of 228 households followed by in-depth interviews with tobacco-processing companies and cooperatives highlights a shift in power away from village government officials toward cooperative leaders, as the latter have become gatekeepers for various development projects offered by tobacco traders (especially through Corporate Social Responsibility programs) sidelining village executives. However, cooperatives still have limited bargaining power to negotiate better deals for tobacco producers, little capacity to influence the inputs distribution system and no control over side-selling. These findings shed light on the political role of cooperatives and the limits of their incorporation into rural development strategies.

Using traditional sources of energy for cooking in rural areas of Tanzania is associated with problems such as lung diseases, soil erosion and air pollution. This paper identifies the energy sources used for cooking and its determinants in rural areas of Tanzania. Cross-sectional survey design through questionnaire was used to collect data from 384 households living in rural areas of Njombe and Iringa regions in Tanzania. Multistage cluster sampling technique was employed to sample districts, wards and villages, while rural heads of households were sampled randomly using the fishbowl method to avoid biasness. Descriptive analysis such as frequencies and percentages were used. Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) techniques was used to estimate the parameters of factors determining the choices of energy sources for cooking in rural areas of Tanzania. The findings show that firewood is the main source of energy for cooking, followed by charcoal, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and electricity in rural areas of Tanzania. The study shows that education, household size, occupation, income, and age of respondents determine the choices of energy sources for cooking. It can be concluded that, apart from improving income, other intervention such as family planning, reforestation programmes and promotion of the use of modern cooking stoves should be done to ensure sustainable development in rural areas of Tanzania

Energy access plays a crucial role in enhancing the social-economic development among the household members in any nation. Notwithstanding the role of energy access in improving the livelihood of people, the problem of energy access has revealed to be more serious in rural areas of Tanzania. The increased in problem of energy access in rural areas of the developing countries is due to the absence of a unified set of indicators for measuring the energy access to rural households from developing countries including Tanzania. This study therefore, aimed at determining the indicators of energy access in rural areas of Tanzania.The study employed Cross- sectional type of the research design to collect data from 384 heads of household from the rural areas of Njombe and Iringa regions in Tanzania. Moreover, the Quantitative Exploratory Factor Analysis using Principal Component analysis and varimax method was employed to determine the indicators of energy access. The identified indicators using exploratory Factor Analysis was further confirmed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The study findings revealed that, the indicators for measuring the provision of energy access to rural households in developing countries including Tanzania ranked based on its importance are: availability, affordability, durability, efficient, no production of smokes, easy to use and ability to keep cooking facilities clean.Based on these findings, the study concludes that, indicators of energy access are important in enhancing the social economic development and improvement of the livelihood of people in rural areas. In the light of this conclusion the study recommends to government energy experts and other practitioners of to use the identified indictors when measuring energy access to rural households in Tanzania in order to improve the livelihood and their standard of living.

Contract farming has received renewed attention recently as developing economies try to grapple with how to transform the agricultural sector and its associated value chains. This book examines different contract arrangements for selected crops, applying both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to examine how contract farming affects smallholders and value chain dynamics in Tanzania.

Contract farming has received renewed attention recently as developing economies try to grapple with how to transform the agricultural sector and its associated value chains. This book examines different contract arrangements for selected crops, applying both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to examine how contract farming affects smallholders and value chain dynamics in Tanzania., Contract farming has received renewed attention recently as developing economies try to grapple with how to transform the agricultural sector and its associated value chains. This book examines different contract arrangements for selected crops, applying both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to examine how contract farming affects smallholders and value chain dynamics in Tanzania.

Due to changes in the global agricultural system and support from various organizations, contract farming has recently been significantly expanded in many developing countries. A considerable body of literature analyses the impact of contract farming on the welfare of smallholders, whereas its impact on efficiency and productivity is mostly overlooked. This study addresses this salient gap by combining the approaches suggested by BravoUreta, Greene, and Solís (Empirical Economics 43:55–72, 2012) and Rao, Brümmer, and Qaim (American Journal of Agricultural Economics 94:891–912, 2012). We first use the approach of Bravo-Ureta, Greene and Solís (2012) to estimate two separate production frontiers (one for contract farmers and one for non-contract farmers) that account for potential biases due to self-selection on both observed and unobserved variables. Then, we follow Rao, Brümmer and Qaim (2012) and create a meta-frontier in order to estimate the effects of participation on the farms’ meta-technology ratio, their group technical efficiency, and their meta-technology technical efficiency. The empirical analysis uses a cross-sectional data set from sunflower farmers in Tanzania, where some of the farmers participate in contract farming while others do not. We find a significant selection bias, which justifies the use of the sample selection framework. Our preliminary results indicate that contract farming significantly increases the yield potential (meta-technology ratio) but lowers the group technical efficiency. As the first effect is slightly larger than the second, we find a small positive effect of contract farming on productivity (meta-technology technical efficiency). The positive effects on the yield potential and the (average) productivity can be (at least partly) explained by the contractor’s provision of (additional) extension service and seeds of high-yielding varieties to the contract farmers.