Farm livelihood impact of apron star 42 ws – dressed bean seeds and its commercialization viability in Mbeya and Mbozi districts, Tanzania

M.Sc. Dissertation

Commercializing the subsistence agriculture is essential for improving the smallholder farmers‟ productivity in Sub-Saharan African countries including Tanzania. However, without an adoption of productivity enhancing technologies such as improved seeds, realization of such an improvement is inevitable. Arguably, for smallholder farmers to adopt new technologies, they need to feel its impact on their livelihoods. This study assesses the adoption, commercialization and impact of the bean seeds dressing chemical – the APRON STAR 42 WS on smallholder farmers‟ food security and nutrition status, income, and bean yield. A two-stage sampling with stratification was applied to randomly select a sample of 203 farm households. The propensity score matching was employed to isolate the impact attributable to adoption of the treated bean seeds among farm households. Assessment of the decision and extent of commercialization adopted the Tobit and Cragg‟s double hurdle models. Results indicate that adoption level is about 37%, and farm size, household size, access extension services and perceived yield effects are significantly influencing farmers‟ adoption decision of improved seeds. Significant difference in favour of adopters was found on income, yield, and food security and nutrition statuses. The variables education, farm size, extension services access, output, and education; and household size, extension services access, and output were found significant on influencing decision and extent of commercialization, respectively. Income, consumption, price of local seeds, and own price elasticities of seeds demand were also found significant. Thus, it is firstly recommended that, agricultural input intervention initiatives should emanate from farmers‟ needs in order to make the promotion efforts of productivity enhancing agricultural technologies efficacious. Secondly, to stimulate the dormant use of improved seeds, an effective stimulant is own seed price, though with consideration of production costs to ensure mutual benefits between farmers and seeds producers.