Agricultural growth, poverty, and nutrition in Tanzania

Karl Pauw and James Thurlow

No 947, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Rapid economic growth has failed to significantly improve poverty and nutrition outcomes in Tanzania. This raises concerns over a decoupling of growth, poverty, and nutrition. We link recent production trends to household incomes using a regionalized, dynamic computable general equilibrium and microsimulation model. Results indicate that the structure of economic growth—not the level—is currently constraining the rate of poverty reduction in Tanzania. Most importantly, agricultural growth trends have been driven by larger-scale farmers and by crops grown in only a few regions of the country. The slow expansion of food crops and livestock also explains the weak relationship between agricultural growth and nutrition outcomes. Additional model simulations find that accelerating agricultural growth, particularly in maize, greatly strengthens the growth–poverty relationship and enhances households' caloric availability. We conclude that low productivity, market constraints (including downstream agroprocessing), and barriers to import substitution for major food crops are among the more binding constraints to reducing poverty and improving nutrition in Tanzania.

Keywords: economic growth; Poverty; Nutrition; household incomes; Computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling; Agricultural growth; Microsimulation model; livestock; Food crops; low productivity; market constraints; Development strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-cmp, nep-dev and nep-fdg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Agricultural growth, poverty, and nutrition in Tanzania (2011)
Working Paper: Agricultural Growth, Poverty, and Nutrition in Tanzania (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:947

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