The Determinants of Farmers’ Choice of Markets for Staple Food Commodities in Dodoma and Morogoro, Tanzania

Rajabu Joseph Kangile, Charles Peter Mgeni, Zena Theopist Mpenda and Stefan Sieber
Additional contact information
Rajabu Joseph Kangile: Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) Dakawa Center, Morogoro P.O. Box 1892, Tanzania
Charles Peter Mgeni: School of Agricultural Economics and Business Studies, The Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro P. O. Box 3007, Tanzania
Zena Theopist Mpenda: School of Agricultural Economics and Business Studies, The Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro P. O. Box 3007, Tanzania
Stefan Sieber: The Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany

Agriculture, 2020, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-12

Abstract: Institutional and policy-induced factors affect farmers’ decisions on the choice of the market to sell their staple foods. This results in low motivation to participate in the production and agricultural commodities’ commercialization. This study determines specific institutional and policy-induced factors affecting the farmers’ decisions regarding the staple food market choice in Tanzania. The study uses household survey data collected from 820 farmers raising staple food crops (maize, rice, sorghum, and millet) randomly selected from the Dodoma and Morogoro regions, Tanzania. The index method, descriptive statistics, and choice model (multinomial logit model) are used for data analysis. Qualitative policy analysis is used for analyzing policy-induced factors. Findings show a low level of integration of farmers into staple food markets, with female-headed households facing more hurdles in accessing markets than male-headed households. Age, formal training, the value of agricultural production, membership in organizations, access to credit, contractual arrangements, and distance to markets are significant factors driving farmers to choose a particular market to sell their produces. Restriction of selling and use of staple food commodities, instability of food policy administration, and procedural operation obstacles are found to be key policy-induced factors affecting the marketing of staple food commodities in Tanzania. The scale of production, as depicted by the value of production, and supply contract arrangement with buyers are important factors to ensure that farming households excel in lucrative markets through increased economies of scale and the ability to reach critical volumes for supplying to various markets. Supporting market linkage and infrastructure, as well as enforcing transparent and non-restrictive food marketing policies, would help many farmers enter into contractual arrangements that increase market access and improve market choices.

Keywords: market choice; staple food; policy; institutional; index method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/5/142/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/5/142/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:10:y:2020:i:5:p:142-:d:352613

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().