Contribution Of Food Crops In Promoting Livelihood In Rural Areas: A Case Of Banana Farming In Muleba District

ABSTRACT

This study mainly focused on assessing the Contribution of Food Crops in Promoting

Livelihood in Rural Areas in Tanzania, particularly in Muleba District. The study

guided with three specific objective: to examine the ways in which extension

services and the land tenure systems affect the banana farming in Muleba District, to

establish the impacts of climatic changes and banana diseases on the banana

production in Muleba District and to assess the role of the government and other

stakeholders in the improvement of banana farming in Muleba District

A total number of 100 respondents were involved in the study. The methods such as

fieldwork survey, interviews, focused group discussion, and documentary review

were employed in data collection. The study used cluster as a method and within

clustering, simple random sampling was used in order to select the banana producing

households which were used in the survey as the sample. The analysis of the

collected data was done by using the SPSS (version 20) computer program.

The findings of the study revealed that the livelihoods of the banana farmers is

declining because of the low banana production which is the result of declining land

fertility, climatic changes, inappropriate land tenure system which focus on the

growth of population and lack of clear government plans that involve farmers.

Likewise, this analysis discovered that there some improvement in livelihood despite

the decline of banana wilt disease and the climatic changes. Banana farmers still are

depending on banana farmers on getting their daily needs despite of the fact there are

the declining of banana production still there few production. Further ,the study

discussed the role played by extension offices in helping farmers, the land tenure

traditional systems which is based on inheritances affects the food production

because of the increase of population, and the average income of the banana farmers

before and after the eruption of banana wilt disease.

The study suggests that there should be feedback for banana farmers from the

research which are being conducted about banana wilt disease. In addition, the study

recommends that more time should be given to the agriculture extension officers to

work very closely with the community in order to help them adopt new agricultural

skills, so as to translate the policy of Kilimo kwanza effectively from the grassroots.