Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
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Browsing Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences by Subject "Agricultural sustainability"
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Item Agricultural sustainability and food security in agroecological zones of Tanzania(Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021) Mkonda, Msafiri YusuphAgricultural sustainability is crucial for developing countries, including Tanzania whose economy and food security entirely depend on agriculture. Tanzania has seven agro-ecological zones with different potentials and challenges to attain agricultural sustainability. These agro-ecological zones are coastal, arid, semi-arid, plateau, southern and western highlands, northern highlands, and alluvial. To attain agricultural sustainability and food security in the country, it is essential to explore biophysical, economic and social dimensions. This chapter reviews the climatic situation, agricultural potentials and agronomic practices. Arid and semi-arid zones are more vulnerable to environmental stress, especially climate change, than plateau, alluvial, and northern and southern highlands. Efficient agricultural sustainability has increased peoples’ income and food security in resilient agro-ecological zones by 50%, and by 10% in vulnerable zones. This has eventually improved the livelihoods of the people in resilient agro-ecological zones, and has allowed cultivation of few crop varieties such as sorghum and millet in vulnerable zones. Areas with the best agronomic practices such as animal manure fertilization have increased crop yields from 0.75 to 1.95 tons ha −1 . As a result, this yield increment has improved the livelihoods of about 70% of Tanzanian farmers who entirely depend in agriculture.Item Soil quality and agricultural sustainability in semi-arid areas(Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2018) Mkonda, M. Y.; He, X.Soil quality and agricultural sustainability are required to feed about nine billion people by the year 2050. To feed such a population, the planet ought to increase food production by 60%. To attain agricultural sustainability, there should be a balance among biophysical, economic and social dimensions under which soil quality is a core aspect. It is worthwhile to explore soil quality versus agricultural sustainability in sub-Saharan countries because the population is expected to increase by 80%. This chapter reviews the current agronomic practices in countries characterized by semiarid agro-ecological zones and their implications to soil quality and agricultural sustainability, using Tanzania as a case study. We found that agro-pastoralism based on maize, sorghum, millet, sheep, cattle and cow is a current dominant agricultural system but with low yields. Monoculture has contributed to the degradation of soil quality. Drought has raised issues to already stressed ecosystems and made rain-fed agriculture a vulnerable and unsustainable livelihood for smallholder farmers. This situation has reduced the per capita grain harvested area from 0.6 to less than 0.4 ha and thus, affected for more than 70% the smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. Fortunately, areas using fertilizations of animal manure and other organic soil management practices have increased soil fertility and crop yields from 0.82 tn ha−1 under no-fertilization to 1.8 tn ha−1 under organic fertilization.Item Yields of the major food crops: Implications to food security and policy in Tanzania’s Semi-Arid Agro-Ecological Zone(2017) Mkonda, M. Y.; He, X.While Tanzania has been facing food shortage for some decades, little efforts have been made to elicit optimal crop yields. To limit this problem, there is a need for a robust agricultural policy that aims at stabilizing agricultural production and socio-economic entitlement among the farmers. The present study analyses the production trend of maize, sorghum and millet (i.e., staple food crops) under rain fed agriculture in Kongwa District, the semi-arid agro-ecological zone of Central Tanzania, and envisage their implications to food security and policy. We collected a set of crop data (1980–2015) from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. In addition, 400 respondents were sampled randomly in the study area during household survey while a series of interviews and discussions were conducted mostly basing on the expertise. The Mann-Kendall Test and Microsoft excel (window 13) and theme content methods were employed for data analyses. The results showed that the production trends for maize, sorghum and millet yields have been decreasing at R2 = 0.40, 0.35 and 0.11 respectively and this trend was supported by 80% of the respondents. This decrease was greatly influenced by the temporal decrease in the mean annual rainfall (R2 = 0.21). The diminishing production trend has already decreased food security for 30% in the area. Since agricultural policy can be among the main sources of this poor yields, an explicit and sound agricultural policy should be the central aspect in planning and implementing agricultural activities.