Characterizing Farmers and Farming System in Kilombero Valley Floodplain, Tanzania

Abstract

Recognizing the diversity of farmers is crucial for the success of agricultural, rural, or environmental programs and policies aimed at the sustainable use of natural resources. In this study, based on survey data collected in the Kilombero Valley Floodplain (KVF) in Tanzania, we design a typology of farmers to describe the range of farm types and farming systems systematically, and to understand their livelihood and land use behavior. The KVF is the largest, low-altitude, seasonally-flooded, freshwater wetland in East Africa. Despite its values, KVF is a very fragile ecosystem threatened by current and future human interventions. We apply multivariate statistical analysis (a combination of principal component analysis and cluster analysis) to identify farm groups that are homogenous within and heterogeneous between groups. Three farm types were identified: “Monocrop rice producer”, “Diversifier”, and “Agropastoralist”. Monocrop rice producers are the dominant farm types, accounting for 65 percent of the farm households in the valley, characterized by more than 80 percent of the land allocated to rice, showing strong market participation and high utilization of labor. Diversifiers, on the other hand, allocate more land to maize and vegetables. Agropastoralists account for 7 percent of the surveyed farmers and differ from the other two groups by, on average, larger land ownership, a combination of livestock and crop production, and larger household sizes. This typology represents the diversity of farmers in KVF concerning their land use and livelihood strategy, and will allow to target policy interventions. Besides, it may also inform further research about the diverse landscape of floodplain farming, through the classification and interpretation of different socio-economic positions of farm households.

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“…The study was carried out in the northern part of the Kilombero Valley in southern-central Tanzania located within the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGOT) (Gebrekidan et al 2020) (Figure 1). The study area is bordered to the west by the Udzungwa National Park and to the east by Nyerere National Park (previously the Selous Game Reserve) (Johansson and Abdi 2020).…”

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Modeling intensification decisions in the Kilombero Valley floodplain: A Bayesian belief network approach

“…To represent the farming practices used by a particular household, we also include the farmer type. The farmer type variable is a typology constructed through a combination of principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering to stratify farmers into homogeneous clusters according to their livelihood and land use (Gebrekidan et al., 2020). We generated a topographic wetness index (TWI) using a digital elevation model of our study area (slope and upslope contributing area) to capture the quality and hydrological characteristics of the farm.…”