Agriculture Supply Chain Challenges and Smallholder Maize Farmers’ Market Participation Decisions in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper analyses the supply chain-related challenges affecting smallholder maize farmers’ market participation decisions in Tanzania. The research design adopted for this study was cross-sectional in nature. The data was gathered from 633 smallholder maize farmers from six villages in Dodoma, Tanzania, using structured questionnaires, and the results were analysed using a probit model. Findings revealed that all supply chain-related challenges were significantly related to market participation decisions. Specifically, nine supply chain-related challenges were discovered to have a positive relationship with a decision that smallholder maize farmers make on market participation, including transportation facilities, road conditions, market prices, access to market information, quality of maize, access to inputs, storage facilities, household size, and farm size, while two challenges, market distance and transportation costs, were found to have a negative relationship. Based on this, it was concluded that agriculture supply chain challenges affect market participation decisions of smallholder maize farmers in Tanzania. Therefore, agriculture supply chain-related challenges need to be controlled to enhance the market participation of smallholder maize farmers for them to realise the participation benefits.