The role of conservation agriculture in bridging gender gaps in Tanzania: the case of sustainable agriculture Tanzania
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Date
2021
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Publisher
TAJAS
Abstract
Despite agriculture’s great potential to Tanzania agricultural development, the sector faces
diverse challenges. For example, existence of gender gaps in accessing agricultural production
resources and benefits obtained from the same impede the sector’s growth. Therefore, adoption of
conservation agriculture (CA) has been seen as one of the measures to address the sector limited
productivity. Nonetheless, there is limited knowledge on how CA has managed to reduce gender
inequalities in accessing both reproductive resources and benefits accrued from agriculture. This
paper examines gender gaps in conservation agriculture programme implemented by Sustainable
Agriculture in Tanzania (SAT), by specifically analyzing gender participation and relations in CA
in Morogoro municipality and Morogoro district. This study adopted a mixed method approach
whereby both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from four sites where SAT implements
its activities. Findings show that CA has significantly reduced gander gaps in accessing production
resources and services as well as raising women’s participation in decision making with regards
to production and use of income obtained from sales of produce. Farmers regardless of the gender
can access extension services, and credit, and are involved in various initiatives collectively.
Despite the economic benefits, findings show that CA is laborious and takes much of farmers’ time,
women being more affected. Therefore, it is recommended that the central and local governments
and various stakeholders should promote the spread of conservation agriculture technologies
since it reduces the biasness in agriculture and empowering women. Ensuring access to advanced
cheap technologies to farmers. Nonetheless, there is need to ensure that female farmers are not
overburdened in the process.
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Keywords
Gender gap, Conservation agriculture, Sustainable agriculture Tanzania