Market participation among beef cattle farmers is key to ensuring better income, food security, and sustainable beef supply. Farmers in the traditional beef cattle sector, nevertheless, are well known for their low market participation. This study, thus, sought to examine factors that influenced market participation among beef cattle farmers in the Meatu district of Simiyu region, Tanzania. The study randomly selected a sample size of 393 farmers. The cross-sectional data collected through interviews and questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. The descriptive analyses showed that the average age of the interviewees was 53.73 years with a family size of 13.11. On average, the respondents had about 24.14 years of farming experience. Most of the respondents (67.9%) had primary education. Among the respondents, about 61.3%, 4.6%, and 32.6% had access to market information, farm credits, and veterinary services, respectively. The average cattle herd size was 53.46 heads. About 90.1% of farmers had participated in the markets by selling an average of 5 heads each, per year. This study has revealed low volume of sales, low education levels, and poor access to credits and veterinary services as the major factors that limit market participation. Furthermore, econometric results show that the key factors that significantly influenced farmers to increase the volume of beef cattle sales in the market at P < 0.05 included price, herd size, off-farm income, distance to market, age of the farmer, and cattle fattening. Moreover, membership in cooperatives, access to market information, and farming experience also had significant influence at P < 0.05. This study recommends establishment of strategic cooperatives to function not only as a communication channel for farm credits, price, market information, and training on commercial farming, but also to assist farmers in selection of profitable markets.

Beef cattle production is significant in wealth creation and improving livelihoods of pastoralists, thus reducing poverty. Nevertheless, most pastoralists continue to live in poverty. This study, thus, sought to assess the profitability, viability, and commercialization level of beef cattle production, as well as the socioeconomic characteristics among pastoralists in the Simanjiro District of the Manyara Region, Tanzania. Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of 398 pastoralists, using interviews and questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, gross margin (GM), Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR), and household commercialization index (HCI) methods were used for data analysis. The results revealed that the average age of the pastoralists was 47.7 years with a family size of 10.9. On average, the pastoralists had about 26.4 years of farming experience. Most of the pastoralists (59.3%) had no formal education. Among the pastoralists, only 3% had access to farm credits. Further analysis showed that 98.7% of pastoralists marketed their beef cattle to primary auction markets of which 75.4% of price-setting methods were inappropriate (unprofitable). Among the pastoralists, only 3.8% added value to beef cattle before selling. The average cattle herd size was 119.7 heads, of which 98.4% of cattle herd sizes were local breed cattle. Gross margin and Benefit-Cost Ratio were 136.8 US$ and 2.9, respectively, while household commercialization index was 3.9%. Medication costs constituted 44% of the total variable costs involved in beef cattle production. This study, thus, concluded that beef cattle production is profitable and highly viable to run as a business. However, the commercialization level is low. Furthermore, keeping local breed cattle, inappropriate pricing methods, low-value addition, reliance on primary auction markets, limited access to credits, low level of education, and costs for medications; continue to be critical obstacles to improving profitability, viability, and commercialization level of beef cattle production among pastoralists.

In Tajikistan, owning beef cattle is an important survival mechanism for smallholder farmers to alleviate poverty. Therefore, beef cattle farming enterprises should indeed strive to maximize profit to excel and flourish in a free economy. Nevertheless, smallholder beef cattle farmers are known for making little profit. Thus, this study was set to evaluate the profitability of beef cattle farming and its determinants to enhance profit maximization among smallholder beef cattle farmers in the Baljovan District of Khatlon region, Tajikistan. A total of 388 farming households were chosen at random and purposive for the study. The cross-sectional data collected using questionnaires was analyzed by using descriptive, gross margin (GM), and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. Based on the descriptive analyses, the mean age of beef cattle farmers was 52.73 years, with a household size of 7.07 members. The beef cattle farmers had an average of 18.23 cattle herd size with 8.54 years of farming experience. The average land area possessed by farmers was 10.59 hectares. Among farmers, men (98.2%) dominated beef cattle farming activities. Around 83.8% of farmers had a college grade (higher literacy). Besides, around 89.4% of farmers had access to farm credits. However, only 71.4% of farmers used farm credit points to produce beef cattle. Most of the farmers (89.7%) had access to accurate market information. Such market information enabled 75.8% of farmers to sell their beef cattle to open market (profitable) outlets rather than middlemen. About 89.4% had access to veterinary services. Additionally, about 82.7% of farmers acknowledged the availability of pasture for grazing, which motivated 87.6% of farmers to be involved in selling contracts. Furthermore, economic investigation results revealed that on average, farmers had a gross margin (GM-profit) of 353.77 US$ per cattle, with feed costs (58.6%) and medications costs (26.1%) accounting for the largest share of total variable costs. Meanwhile, the profitability of beef cattle farming among farmers was significantly influenced by education level, family size, farming experience, pasture availability, land size owned, selling contract, feed costs, medications expenses, access to credits, and sales costs (P < 0.05). This study concluded that beef cattle production is a feasible business. However, the potential for increased profitability is significant if existing resources are efficiently coordinated and production expenses, notably feed and healthcare costs, are minimized. Thus, the government should develop additional measures for addressing concerns such as capacity building, suitable and freely available pasture as well as health management, to boost beef cattle profitability among farmers in Tajikistan.

Beef meat production is the key to reducing poverty, achieving food security and nutrition, promoting exports, economic growth, and industrialization. Despite a large number of beef cattle, Tanzania continues to import beef meat and its contribution to GDP is low. Thus, this study used time-series panel data to analyze the beef meat industry in Tanzania from 1990 to 2019, with a particular focus on identifying the reasons and direction of the correlation between beef meat output and its determinants in the production processes. The study applied both descriptive statistics and the Cobb-Douglas production function model, using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) based estimator to analyze the data. Descriptive analyses revealed that Tanzania’s beef meat production increased by 283,871 tons (59.3%-a positive trend) between 1990 and 2019. This increase was accompanied by approximately 29.75%, 53.05%, and 42.42% increases in beef cattle yield (carcass weight (hg) per head, beef cattle inventory, and the number of beef cattle slaughtered, respectively). However, the analysis further revealed that a 2.8% decrease in beef cattle extraction (low harvesting) rate due to low market participation, continues to be a critical barrier to increasing beef meat production in Tanzania. Furthermore, econometric estimates showed that the key factors that positively influenced beef meat output at a 5% significance level (P < 0.05) included beef cattle population (inventory), beef cattle yield (carcass weight (kg) per head, and the number of beef cattle slaughtered, with elasticity coefficients of 0.146, 0.469, and 0.564, respectively). While the number of beef cattle exported positively influenced beef meat production at the 10% significance level (P < 0.1) with an elasticity coefficient of 0.028. Surprisingly, invested credit to agriculture (farm credits) and imported pure-bred beef cattle had a negative impact on beef meat output but were statistically insignificant at P < 0.05. The results of this study have implications as to what factors need to be addressed to further improve beef meat production, thereby reducing its reliance on imports. We suggest that the Tanzania government and policymakers need to establish balanced policies for beef farmers and appropriately manage them so that beef meat development can be induced, contributing to poverty reduction, food security, and economic development.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that influence beef meat exports in Tanzania, with a particular focus on the years 1985 to 2020, in enhancing the development of beef meat export-oriented policy in Tanzania, thereby enhancing beef exports in Tanzania. A time-series panel dataset was analyzed using both descriptive statistics and ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression analyses models. As per the descriptive analyses, beef meat exports reached the highest pick of 4,300 tons per year in 1990, whereas from 1991 to date, beef meat exportation in Tanzania has been in declining trends despite an increase in beef meat output and trade openness from 162,500 to 486,736 tons and 7.6 to 98.7%, respectively. Nevertheless, while the prospect of Tanzanian beef meat exports appears bright and promising, the industry will continue to encounter trade barriers and must stay competitive to produce enough volume and quality beef meat to meet the needs of its existing and expanding markets. This is because, Tanzanian beef meat competes for market share with beef meat from other countries in the global markets, where customers pay a premium for lines of beef meat that meet quality standards while discarding those that do not. This indicates that the quantity of beef meat produced has no relevance to its world market share, but its quality standards do. Furthermore, the econometric results revealed that the coefficients of the terms of trade, Tanzania GDP per capita, global beef meat consumption, trade openness, and beef meat outputs were found to be significantly positive (P < 0.05) influencing beef meat exports in Tanzania, whereas the trading partners’ GDP per capita and exchange rate were not. The findings have varying implications as to what factors need to be addressed to further improve beef meat exports. From the farmer’s perspective, better access to adequate funds as a result of increased income benefit from export will assist in improving beef cattle productivity and quality to compete effectively in the global markets. From the government’s perspective, because trade openness promotes economic growth through export benefits, the Tanzania government and policymakers need to establish balanced policies to strengthen bilateral trade relationships to generate more opportunities in global markets.