Africa-Press – Tanzania. ABOUT 26,143 sunflower growers and oil seed processors in Manyara region have undergone training on high agronomic productivity, modern processing technologies and effective marketing strategies, thanks to a non-governmental organisation — Farm Africa.
Through a two-year project dubbed ‘Flourishing Futures’ implemented by Farm Africa in the region, the smallholder farmers (SHFs) have also managed to increase their investment through inclusive bundled services as well as productivity and pro-poor trade linkages.
Basing on market approaches to sunflower production in northern Tanzania, the initiative under the financial patronage from the Agricultural Markets Development Trust (AMDT) enhanced collaboration across the value chain and pro-poor mutually beneficial contractual arrangements between smallholder farmers, small-scale processors, and larger processors/buyers.
“Throughout the project, the beneficiary farmers and SMEs processors have made significant progress in sunflower production, processing, the two main employment opportunities of sunflower value chains,” said Programme Manager for Farm Africa-Tanzania, Mr Tumaini Elibariki, in an interview with this paper in Dodoma.
He added that the initiative played a key role to curtail systemic constraints faced by farmers and sunflower processors, including low adoption of improved seeds and weak incentives for investment, as well as low technical, operational and financial management capacity used to stifle demand among processors.
“Through the intervention, a total of 13,064 smallholder farmers had been engaged in the sunflower production by October 2020, which is equivalent to 131percent of the targeted 10,000 farmers, which means the project milestone target is exceeded by 31 percent,” he said.
Mr Elibariki stated that the project which had been implemented in the region with close partnership from local government officials from Babati, Kiteto and Hanang Districts had enabled at least 95.68 percent of the farmers to invest in commercial hybrid seeds. He said record proves that 12,500 smallholder farmers, out of the total 13,064, were doing sunflower as the means for income generation, which translates to improved employment opportunities.
Similarly, he informed that development means the project target of having 6400 smallholder farmers participating in cultivation of hybrid sunflower seeds has been exceeded by 195 percent.
“At least 80.10 percent of smallholder’s farmers’ groups have received Credit facilities from different sources outside of their organizations. This value can be extrapolated to indicate that around 10,464 smallholder farmers out of 13,064 received credit facilities,” he expressed.
He informed that 67 percent of the SMEs sunflower oil seed processors in the region have significantly increased their annual processing volumes from an average of 49MT processed in 2018 to 70MT per SME processor in 2020.
“Also, the overall total annual processing volume of all targeted processors increased from 732MT in 2018 to 1029MT in 2020,” he elaborated. With the project’s support, the sunflower oil seed processor’s extraction rate efficiency has increased from 4.2Kg seed per litre in 2018 to 3.2Kg seed per litre in 2020 with local varieties requiring greater seed volume per litre than hybrid seeds.
“There is no significant improvement with use of local varieties, while the use of hybrid seeds has significantly improved the extraction efficiency rate. SMEs now require fewer Kg of seed (around 3.2kg) to produce a litre of sunflower oil, while with the local variety it would need at least 4.2kg of seed to extract a litre of sunflower oil,” he detailed.
Farm Africa has been working in Tanzania since 1990 with an eye to support smallholder farmers, pastoralists and forest communities, helping them become self-sufficient through pioneering techniques that boost harvests, sustain natural resources and help end Africa’s need for aid.
