Agriculture Sustainability, Inclusive Growth, and Development Assistance: Insights from Tanzania

Aid for agriculture development in sub Saharan Africa has increased in recent years, but little is known about which farmers are participating in the interventions, the production structures employed, and the foreseeable consequence on food security and agricultural development. This research draws insights from two projects in Tanzania funded by the United States under its Feed the Future initiative. The research examined the categories of farmers participating, production structure employed, and the implications for sustainable and inclusive food security and agricultural development. The research reveals that significant results of sustainable production can be found at individual level, but only a limited number of farmers with endowment of suitable land with access to water, and credit and some level of organization are participating. The UN rapporteur on the Right to Food has called for increasing food production where the poor and hungry live; we argue that current investment approaches oriented to increasing production, fail to adequately address the local specificity of hunger. As a result, substantial increases in aid inflows over the recent years may have limited effect on reducing the numbers of the hungry. The challenge to stakeholders is to spread the technologies to many more smallholder producers, particularly targeting the poor more precisely.