Farming in the Singe Ward
“I see people adopting changes now and I see other people witnessing the impact of those changes, people start to believe that change is possible and beneficial.”
Agriculture is an essential component of Tanzania’s economy, accounting for 67% of national employment and 29% of GDP. For the vast majority of people in Babati, northern Tanzania, agriculture is the primary income generator, relied upon to provide food and income for the household. Recognising the essential role of agriculture in breaking the cycle of poverty, Livingstone Tanzania Trust’s (LTT) Smallholder Farmer Training Programme works with farmers to improve their incomes and income security. This forms a key component of our participatory community development process.
In 2019, we launched the second phase of the farmer training programme. This allowed LTT and our local partner, Maisha Capacity Development Opportunity (MCDO), to continue our in-depth work with farmers in the region. The programme sees us engaging farmers in their fields over the long term responding to their evolving needs to enable practical, sustainable change, ultimately building resilience levels. This process starts with building farmers knowledge and skills. 99% of farmers now report adopting changes in their farming since taking part in the programme, skills that are helping them to improve, scale up and diversify their production.
97% of the farmers ended the year in profit with 70% improving their profits from the previous year. This is a major achievement for farmers in Singe. Particularly significant gains have been made in fruit (1500 banana trees have been planted), tomatoes, milk (97% increase in gross profit) and poultry (69% increase in income), where participating farmers are seeing significantly improved incomes.
Income diversification is an important strategy to improve farmers resilience. It can enable farmers to reduce their reliance on a single crop and insulate them from the potentially devastating impact of sudden market or climatic shocks. With increasingly erratic weather patterns and pest outbreaks resilience has become ever more important for smallholder farmers and it is encouraging to see 44% of participants improving their diversification since joining the programme. Our community demonstration sites play an essential role in this process, illustrating successful production of alternative crops which can then be replicated by participants. Over the year 4 new demonstration sites have been established in Singe. We now see increased numbers benefiting from additional crops, poultry and dairy incomes and more farmers starting side line enterprises.
A particularly notable impact of the programme is the steadily changing mindset of participants and the associated evolution of their activities from subsistence farming to a livelihoods approach were activities are more strategic and intentional and which lays the foundations for long term income improvement. This process has been supported by the merger of the Street Business School model with existing agricultural training and has boosted the entrepreneurial mindset of participants.
This programme clearly demonstrates why working together over time can support farmers to bring about positive changes and why this is a vital component in improving livelihoods in Babati. This report provides an overview of the programmes progress to date and gives voice to the multiple and complex stories that have developed from farmers engagement with our holistic training programme. Each participant we engage with adapts training to their needs, circumstances and aspirations and we work with them to make that successful. This report celebrates the different journey’s farmers are on and the milestones they have achieved.
Click HERE to read the report.