Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania
Smallholder farmers are the backbone of Tanzanian food production, producing 69% of all food consumed in the country. They manage this without the access to financing, irrigation, reliable weather predictions, mechanization, technical education, quality inputs, and market information that their Western counterparts enjoy. They accomplish this on farms smaller than 10 acres, harvesting fields that have only seen human labor.
Despite their outsized role both in Tanzania and elsewhere on the continent, smallholder farmers are largely ignored by large multinationals. The smallholder context is too low-tech and too cash-constrained to adopt agricultural methods developed for the West’s large, commercial farms. Instead of innovating their products and accepting lower profit margins, large multinationals instead push ill-suited products and services into the market. And then complain when the smallholders don’t react like their Western counterparts.
This is especially the case for Tanzanian sunflowers. Since 1960, Tanzanian smallholders have only been able to choose between the low-yielding but reliable Record variety and imported hybrid varieties. These imported seeds were originally designed for large, commercial farms and they require fertilizer, irrigation, and pest treatments to obtain high yields. The high cost of these additional inputs, coupled with the 700% higher cost of imported seeds, makes this an expensive proposition for the average smallholder.
Heshima Seeds Limited was founded to address the gap in sunflower seed for Tanzania’s smallholder farmers. At every level, we have tailored the business to best fit with the needs of smallholder farmers, whether it is through our pricing, our distribution, or our agronomy service. We are kicking-off our R&D program by engaging with international researchers around a common goal of improved and affordable sunflower varieties for smallholder farmers. And we will test each new variety under diverse smallholder farms to ensure only the best-fit products reach our customers.
https://www.fao.org/3/i5251e/i5251e.pdf
-Gordon Day
