View/Open - Sokoine University of Agriculture

7.5.1 Agricultural incomeOverall, agriculture constitutes 46% of all income and includes both incomes fromlivestock and crop production. Crop production was the main activity and we onlyrecorded one person who did not produce anything. Although 76% of households keptsome livestock only 19% of the agricultural income comes from livestock, and mostlyfrom poultry. On average each household had 2.28 ha to cultivate on. The surplusproduce were either taken to the market or sold inside the village. Although thehousehold could get a higher price if waiting to sell their produce, the majority had tosell it at a lower price after harvest because they had no way of preserving it. Most ofthe money they got from selling their crop was used to get additional types of food,especially in the period between harvests where the ability to buy food was crucial,meaning very little was left to invest in agriculture again.in Lunenzi agricultural income accounted for 70% of their total income and can beexplained by agriculture being the overall dominant activity (100%). Although 93 %in Masugu were engaged in agriculture their income from it only accounted for 26%of the total income. This tells us that even though households tend to engage in otheractivities, they will still keep land for cultivation.As seen in Table 36, the agricultural income varied significantly between wealthgroups. Not surprisingly the low income group depends most on agriculture, as itmakes up 78% of their total income, however interestingly the middle income groupfollow closely by with 73% of their income coming from agriculture. For the lesspoor agriculture only makes up a small proportion of their total income, with 36%,however they still produce a lot more than those with a lower income. In fact almost50% of the total agricultural income is within those with the highest income whereasonly 18% of the total agricultural income is within the lowest income. An interestingfact though, is that regardless of wealth group over 50% of the produce is sold, forinstance 54% of the produce of those most poor is sold and only slightly more amongthose who are less poor with 65%.As of agricultural productivity, the size of land does not alone dictate how much youwill be able to produce and as we will see below also location plays a big part interms of soil quality, climate, agricultural practices etc. For instance, whereas Nyali196