Sustaining Livelihoods through Organic Agriculture in Tanzania - UMB

projects indicated four mechanisms through which improvements are occurring,
including:
1. intensification of a single component of the farm system, e.g. home-garden
intensification with vegetables and trees;
2. addition of a new productive element e.g. fish in paddy rice
3. better use of natural capital especially water through rainwater harvesting and
irrigation scheduling and land through reclamation;
4. introduction of new regenerative elements e.g. Integrated Pest Management
(IPM) or locally adapted crop varieties and animal breeds (Pretty, 2002; in
Scialabba & Hattam, 2002).
Organic systems tend to use a combination of different improvement types, which
augments the dividend of synergistic effects (Hine & Pretty, 2006). By offering an
integrated whole system approach to farming, organic agriculture increases diversity
and resistance to stress, making it ideally suited for many poor, marginalised
smallholder farmers.
The survey also showed that ‘agricultural systems with high levels of social and
human capital are more able to innovate in the face of uncertainty’ (Pretty et al.,
2003; 13). Notably, 97% of cases in the SAFE-World Research Project have a human
capital development element, and half of both organic and near-organic systems had a
focus on social capital building through groups (Pretty & Hine, 2001).
Organic agricultural practices bring about livelihood benefits to smallholder farmers
in the Global South 1 by building natural, human, social and financial assets of
farmers. Ways in which these capital assets are accumulated over time in organic
systems are summarised below:
1 In this paper, the “Global South” is used in lieu of “the Third World”, “Developing” and “Less
developed countries” and in order to distinguish these countries from the so-called “Advanced”,
“Developed” countries of the “First world”, referred to here as “the Global North”.
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