Enhancing Crop Commercialisation for Food Security in Rural Tanzania: A Case of Liwale District

Abstract

This study explores the effect of small-scale agricultural crop commercialisation on household food security in Liwale, Lindi. The study used a household survey data from a sample of 389 households that were collected in 2017. The Principal Component Analysis was used to develop the household food security index and the Cluster Analysis was used to assign the individual households to their respective clusters of food security index. The output side measure of commercialisation was used to develop crop commercialisation index, and lastly, the Ordered Logit Model was used to estimate the effect of commercialisation on food security. The average household food security index is 32%. The majority (64%) of the households were moderately food secured with an average food security index of 32.8% while only 16% of households were relatively more food secure than the rest and with average food security index of 49.1%. The average commercialisation of small-scale agricultural crops is 66%. The results from ordered logit estimation show that crop commercialisation, off-farm income, and access to extension services positively affect the level of household food security while credit negatively affects food security. The implication of the findings is that, small local processing factories should be established in rural areas to promote commercialisation, value addition and increase of market access and linkages to reduce post-harvest losses incurred as a result of poor storage technology and perishability.