Abstract:
The study was conducted in Sumbawanga Rural District in Rukwa region. Its
objective was to examine the influence of grain quality and standards in maize
trading. Specifically, to find the significance of maize cleaning, grading and
standardizing in grain marketing, to examine the significance of the road condition
in determining maize buyers’ accessibility to buying posts and the significance of
the number of maize buyers in fluctuating farmers’ maize selling price. Purposive
multistage sampling technique was employed to get 180 respondents; 60 traders and
120 producers. A questionnaire and a checklist of questions were used to collect
qualitative and quantitative data. Linear and logistic regression models were used to
test the hypotheses and inferences were made at 5% level of significance. Maize
cleaning reduced net marketing margin at a rate of 0.031; with p = 0 . 710 it was
thus found to be statistically insignificant. Grading of maize into classes was also
statistically insignificant ( p = 0 . 094 ). However, it had a positive influence at a rate
of 0.136 on the trader’s net marketing margin. Standardizing of maize had no
statistical significance on net marketing margin ( p = 0 . 693 ) although it had a
positive effect on the net marketing margin at the rate of 0.033. Cleaning, grading
and standardization of maize increased marketing costs and leaving them uncovered
in the net marketing margins.
