9 pages, Despite agriculture’s great potential to Tanzania agricultural development, the sector faces diverse challenges. For example, existence of gender gaps in accessing agricultural production resources and benefits obtained from the same impede the sector’s growth. Therefore, adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) has been seen as one of the measures to address the sector limited productivity. Nonetheless, there is limited knowledge on how CA has managed to reduce gender inequalities in accessing both reproductive resources and benefits accrued from agriculture. This paper examines gender gaps in conservation agriculture programme implemented by Sustainable Agriculture in Tanzania (SAT), by specifically analyzing gender participation and relations in CA in Morogoro municipality and Morogoro district. This study adopted a mixed method approach whereby both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from four sites where SAT implements its activities. Findings show that CA has significantly reduced gander gaps in accessing production resources and services as well as raising women’s participation in decision making with regards to production and use of income obtained from sales of produce. Farmers regardless of the gender can access extension services, and credit, and are involved in various initiatives collectively. Despite the economic benefits, findings show that CA is laborious and takes much of farmers’ time, women being more affected. Therefore, it is recommended that the central and local governments and various stakeholders should promote the spread of conservation agriculture technologies since it reduces the biasness in agriculture and empowering women. Ensuring access to advanced cheap technologies to farmers. Nonetheless, there is need to ensure that female farmers are not overburdened in the process.
Tripp, Robert (author / Overseas Development Institute, London, UK), Wijeratne, Mahinda (author / University of Ruhuna, Kamburupitiya, Sri Lanka), and Piyadasa, V. Hiroshini (author / University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2005-10
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 146 Document Number: C23161
15 p., The results of a study in Sri Lanka, combined with a review of the literature, provide evidence that Farmer Field Schools (FFS) can contribute to increasing farmers' skills and lowering insecticide use in rice. However, there are questions about their capacity to reach the majority of farmers and there's little evidence that skills learned are passed to nonparticipants, or that an FFS is a likely basis for sustained group activity. The results draw attention to the problems of relying on simple formulas in agricultural programs and point to inadequacies in the assessment of donor projects.
