Abstract:
This study aimed at evaluating farmers participation in the value addition to oilseeds
and its implication on
farmer’s income with special emphasis on sunflower. The
general objective was to promote sustainable sunflower production and income
generation through value addition in the rural sunflower potential areas of Tanzania.
Specifically the study aimed to: assess processing capacity and utilization, identify
factors influencing farmer participation in value addition, describe marketing
channels of farmer value added sunflower in the market area of Tanzania, describe
oil millers constraints and suggest interventions. Structured questionnaires were used
to collect primary data from purposefully selected 205 respondents; 100 participating
and 100 non participating farmers, and 5 oil millers from 8 villages. Discussions and
participatory observations methods were also used. The results indicate that milling
capacity is about 11,280kgs per day of which only about 32.3% is utilized at peak
period and about 14.3% when sunflower is scarce. Most of farmers sold their
sunflower products in the village. Millers were constrained by breakdown of
machine, power cuts and scarcity of sunflower. The logit model was estimated using
data from 200 farmers to test the hypothesis that socio-economic and institutional
factors influence farmer participation in value addition to sunflower. Education and
price had significant positive influences. Inadequate knowledge, formal knowledge,
low income and poor market information had significant negative influences. There
is a need to foster farmer’s involvement in the process of imparting knowledge.
Reliable market information system countrywide which; can effectively connect
producers and buyers, electricity and rural road network need to be in place.
