Mosses, Osuvat Simon2020-04-272020-04-272016Mosses, O. S. (2016) Rice market participation and channel choice by smallholder farmers: the case of Kahama and Kilombero districts, Master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaamhttp://41.86.178.5:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/10305Available in print form, East Africana Collection, Dr. Wilbert Chagula Library, Class mark (THS EAF HD1476.T34M67)Low value addition and low prices for agricultural goods are dominant in Tanzania like in other Sub-Saharan African countries and therefore create disincentive to production. The main objective of this dissertation is to identify and analyze factors influencing rice market participation and market channel choice by smallholder farmers for improved welfare and production incentive in Kilombero and Kahama districts. Multi-stage procedure and semi-structured questionnaire was applied to solicit primary information from 406 respondents after 2015 farming season. To comply with the objectives, commercialization index, fractional response regression, multinomial logit, principal component analysis and Kruskal-Wallis H test technics were applied for data analysis. The result indicates that about 75% of rice produced during the year 2015 was sold. This implies that the level of commercialization in the study area is moderate. Furthermore study results indicates that attributes such as age, access to credit, distance to the nearest market, road quality, information access, rice output, and milling rice significantly influenced the likelihood of commercialization in the study area. In addition the study area found that choice of point of sale is statistically influenced by Social capital (membership to farmer group): transaction cost (distance from storage/farm to the nearest market, time taken to reach sell point); output and road quality. Finally the result indicated significant (P<0.05) difference between four marketing channel used and three wealth categories. Based on the study, rice is produced as a staple and as a cash crop thus, building capacity on production and marketing environment is crucial.enRice marketSmallholder farmersKahama districtsKilombero districtThesis