Institutional Arrangements And Performance Of Contract Farming In Sunflower For Smallholder Farmers In Singida And Dodoma Regions, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Contract farming in sunflower as a vertically integrated mode of production and

marketing is one of the most important transformations in the agriculture sector in

Tanzania. Despite the introduction of CF in sunflower, many challenges persisted.

These include unfavourable prices or markets. The reasons or factors for persistence

of challenges in sunflower CF was the uniqueness of smallholder sunflower farmers

such that the conventional CF arrangement was not fully applicable to it. This study

assessed the existing CF arrangements with the aim of finding means of addressing

the challenges and developing CF arrangements for sunflower farming. The study

examined existing institutional arrangements and performance of CF in sunflower

among smallholder farmers in Kibaigwa, Kinangali, Chenene and Haneti villages

(Dodoma region) and Misigiri and Ulemo villages (Singida region). The study also

determined factors essential for an effective CF arrangement in sunflower in the

study area and formulated appropriate CF arrangement for sunflower. Stratified

simple random sampling techniques were employed in selecting a representative

sample of contracted and non contracted farmers where 124 contract farmers and

202 non contracted farmers were interviewed. Purposive sampling was employed to

get key informants in this study.

The study reveals that CF has significant positive influence in increasing farm

productivity. Results show that the revenue of contract farmers increased from Tsh

184,437/= in first year to 320, 704/= in year four. However, the institutional

arrangement is not well structured for effective performance of CF in sunflower in

the study area. Results show that for effective performance of CF, timely provision