Liberalized crop marketing and the peasants: the case of Coffee Growers in Arusha

This dissertation discusses the results of a study of a set of reforms which have in recent years affected the Tanzania small holder farmers sector. It focuses on changes in marketing, production and input supply. Including the revival of the regional cooperative societies. The crucial problems appear to revolve around major issues of institutions, markets, production and policies that conditions the incentives offered to farmers and their capacities to use those incentives. The study concludes that the sustainable performance of the small holder coffee sector cannot be expected to follow automatically from inappropriate policy reforms such as liberalization, weak markets and withdrawal of government. Chapter One introduces the work by way of offering the background to the problem, statement of the, objectives of the study, significance of the study, hypothesis of the study, research methodology and the limitation of the study. Chapter Two highlights a number of issues which ought to be of interest to the understanding of economic reforms such as liberalization of crop marketing in Tanzania. The chapter presents a review of the related literature followed by a related theoretical framework and conceptual framework. Chapter three presents an historical overview of crop marketing in Tanzania with specific emphasis on small holder farming. It further focuses on the cooperative societies which were previously formed out of the peasants’ share of contributions and operated as member-based entities. Chapter four presents the research findings. The research focused, first on reforms such as liberalization affecting the production and quality of coffee in Arumeru District located in Arusha, (Tanzania), and small holder farming with particular attention to the current removal of subsidy to the farmers by the government. Further it looked on the issue of quality by assessing the use of modern technology as one of the major aspects resulting to impact on production and quality of Tanzania coffee growers. Finally, the research looked at the question of marketing of traditional export coffee crop as a result of economic liberalization in Arusha. Chapter five concludes the study with observations about requirements for the future development of small holder coffee farming in Tanzania.