Sustaining Livelihoods through Organic Agriculture in Tanzania - UMB

- adopting novel technologies and practices; and
- community-based with proven impacts.
Thus a purposive sampling strategy was adopted which selected projects on the basis
of 'best practice'. Purposive sampling of predominantly 'good' projects, initiatives and
farmers as research partners has important implications for the overall applicability of
the findings since the cases chosen for investigation were not representative of farms
throughout the country. The 'limited geographical applicability of results' is a
pervasive problem in all on-farm research (Krell, 1999).
The choice of criteria was been influenced by a set of assumptions about the pathways
to livelihood benefits through organic agriculture. It was assumed that organic
agriculture would bring benefits to smallholders when it was a co-operative type of
project with strong social capital, both subsistence and trade orientation, local
ownership and a processing element.
A two-tailed design was adopted in which cases from both extreme of a theoretical
condition were deliberately chosen. The main proposition was that organic projects
bring the most benefits to smallholders when they successfully combine multiple
objectives of food security and trade, and also strengthen social capital. Two types of
organic project were sought:
Type 1 – export trade focus
Type 2 – subsistence and local trade focus.
Besides this key difference in orientation, other variables identified in a typology of
organic project types (agroecological conditions, accessibility, processing and
technology) were kept as similar as possible in order to be able to collapse other
conditions. There were a number of other variables including certification
arrangement and set-up that were dependent upon the main variable being examined
(orientation) and these were also expected to differ across the two case study sites.
The Type 1 project was relatively typical of the organic sector in Tanzania
(approximately 70% of certified projects are firms producing organic commodities for
export). The Type 2 project, on the other hand, is less typical since there only 30% of
certified projects are for the local market. Although this has consequences for the
ability to generalise the findings, it was considered to be of secondary importance
since the advantage of the case study method is that one gains in terms of
phenomenology.
Case study preparation involved development of a protocol (see Appendix 2) and
screening of case study nominations. Key questions being addressed by the CSR were
the same as the initial questions of the whole study:
- the impact of organic agriculture on livelihoods
- pathways to livelihood benefits
- strategies to strengthen the sustainability of organic projects.
In summary, therefore the case study was designed to undertake participatory problem
analysis and participatory solution development. After consultation with different
stakeholders it was decided that two projects in the Mkuranga district of the Coastal
region would be investigated: one focusing on organic cashew for export and the
other, an association of local groups involved in organic vegetable production for
subsistence and local trade.
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