Tanzania’s sunflower farmers stand chance to benefit from Ukraine-Russia War –Report

By Valentine Oforo, Dodoma TANZANIA stands a prestigious opportunity to benefit from the sunflower edible oil supply disruptions caused by the on-going Russia - Ukraine war by tapping into regional markets that heavily depend on sunflower oil imports from Ukraine, namely Kenya and Ethiopia. This can be achieved if the country can immediately work on measures to address the systemic constraints that prevent the smallholder sunflower farmers from achieving their productive potential, according to a special research report made available exclusively to The Guardian by Farm Africa. As per the report, christened 'Tanzania Sunflower Market Assessment Report' ’ the constraints in question include limited access to loans for investment, lack of adequate supplies of improved seed, working in unstructured and unregulated market systems as well as lack of proper business development services support. Moreover, the other setbacks haunting the small-scale farmers engaging into the key sector are agro-dealers being largely based in towns and peri-urban areas, but also, inadequate supply of seed during planting seasons. However, limited access to pro-poor market linkages due to unstructured and unregulated market systems, and inadequate business development services (BDS) support from relevant service providers have also been cited as further challenges upsetting the hapless farmers. Adding essential details concerning the vital research report that has been developed by the Farm Africa’s Tanzanian team, Tumaini Elibariki, Program Manager for Farm Africa in Tanzania said that availability of improved and hybrid seed varieties is essential to growing sunflower yields among smallholder farmers in Tanzania. “The itemized challenges have been aggravated by the war in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have been the leading producers and suppliers of sunflower products globally in recent years, but farmers have seen supply chain disruptions and an increase in fertilizer price due to the conflict,” he observed. According to him, demand for sunflower products is continuing to soar in Tanzania, mainly to meet a growing domestic market for cooking oil, but however, most smallholder farmers are struggling to meet the growing demand due to the myriad challenges. Elibariki added that the report has also successfully offered some meaningful interventions, necessary to be implemented jointly, by the government and key stakeholders in order to address the challenges troubling the sunflower farmers and thus, help smallholder farmers increase the size and quality of their sunflower yields. [caption id="attachment_100698" align="alignnone" width="998"] Tanzania’s sunflower farmer,[/caption] He unveiled the interventions recommended in the report as a need to increase the availability and access to improved seed varieties by smallholder farmers, especially hybrid seed varieties from private seed systems, which are highly productive. Others recommendations, he added, was a need to invest in the use of cleaned record seed through local quality declared seed (QDS) production. “Current initiatives by the Tanzanian government through agricultural research institutions to clean parent stock of record seed for farmers can support such efforts,” he observed. Moreover, the report shed light over the need to stimulate the stock of improved sunflower seed varieties to increase retail and bulk selling by local stockists and agro-dealers. “This can be achieved by fostering partnerships between farmers, farmer organizations (FOs) and Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives (AMCOS), as well as using farmers’ business cases to influence local agro-dealers to stock the seeds and engage in business relationships with local farmers and their respective FO to increase access and availability of seed,” Elibariki unveiled. In Tanzania, around 6percent of the land that is under agricultural production is being used for sunflower production. Sunflowers are mostly produced by one million smallholder farmers in 19 out of the total 30 regions of Tanzania, but production is mainly concentrated in the Central Corridor and the Southern Highlands. In effort to address the challenge of poor production and supply of improved seeds for sunflower among the farmers in the country, the government has capacitated the Agricultural Seeds Agency (ASA) to plug the deficit by producing a total of 2088 tonnes of sunflower standards seed, (worth at 5.84bn/-) and distributed to the farmers within 21 regions. The total demand of sunflower seed in the country is around 5,252 MT while availability of improved seeds is less than 400 MT, the tall, and thus ASA under government directives, managed to acquire and processed total of 2088 tons of Standards sunflower seeds to spur distribution among farmers and restrain the deficit. Farm Africa is an international organisation working to build a prosperous rural Africa through helping farmers to increase their harvests, build their incomes and sustain natural resources, partnering with governments and the private sector to find effective ways to fight poverty.