Does a multi-faceted market-based approach to food crops stimulate food security and agricultural development in the breadbasket of Tanzania?
Integrated development programmes in Sub Sahara Africa
Abstract
The intervention aimed to stimulate agricultural productivity to ensure food security in several districts of Tanzania by implementing a multi-component intervention, which included developing farmer organisations, improving access to inputs through agro-dealer networks, strengthening extension services, and expanding access to output markets through contracting with processors. The intervention sought to reach 45,000 smallholder farmers, including 27,000 women. The ultimate objective was to enable men and women smallholder farmers to benefit from improved technologies, agronomy and efficient markets necessary to improve their food security and increase household incomes. The evaluation aimed to provide robust evidence about the impact of an integrated agricultural development programme, with the ultimate goal of informing agricultural policy in Tanzania and elsewhere. The evaluation design was based on randomisation, which ultimately proved impossible. Overall, results from this study must be interpreted with significant caution.
This study is an output of the Agricultural Innovation Thematic Window programme
Citation
Van den Berg, M, and Levely, I, 2019, Integrated development programmes in Sub Sahara Africa: Does a multi-faceted market-based approach to food crops stimulate food security and agricultural development in the breadbasket of Tanzania? 3ie Grantee Final Report. New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)