Abstract
In Tanzania, diets are dominated by starchy staple crops such as maize, levels of malnutrition are high and largely attributed to lack of dietary diversity. We employed fuzzy cognitive mapping to understand the current soybean, maize and chicken value chains, to highlight stakeholder relationships and to identify entry points for value chain integration to support nutritious diets in Tanzania. The fuzzy cognitive maps were constructed based on information gathered during household interviews with 569 farming households, followed by a participatory workshop with 54 stakeholders involved in the three value chains. We found that the soybean, maize and chicken value chains were interconnected, particularly at the level of the smallholder farming systems and at processing facilities. Smallholder farming households were part of one or more value chains. Chicken feed is an important entry point for integrating the three value chains, as maize and soybean meal are the main sources of energy and protein for chicken. Unlike maize, the utilization of soybean in chicken feed is limited, mainly due to inadequate quality of processing of soybean grain into meal. As a result, the soybean grain produced by smallholders is mainly exported to neighbouring countries for further processing, and soybean meal is imported at relatively high prices. Enhancing local sourcing and adequate processing of soybean, coupled with strengthening the integration of smallholder farmers with other soybean, maize and chicken value chain actors offers an important opportunity to improve access to nutritious diets for local people. Our method revealed the importance of interlinkages that integrate the value chains into a network within domestic markets.
Highlights
Member states of the United Nations pledged their joint support in 2015 for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the second goal (SDG2) aiming to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’ by the year 2030 (UN, 2015)
Based on the N2Africa survey, we found that most households in the Southern Highlands (SH) grew legumes as a sole crop (81%) while 19% intercropped legumes mainly with maize (95%) and other crops (5%) (Table S1)
The emerging chicken feed industry is an important market outlet for smallholders producing maize and soybean in the country providing them with an income to buy nutritious food items
Summary
Member states of the United Nations pledged their joint support in 2015 for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the second goal (SDG2) aiming to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’ by the year 2030 (UN, 2015). SDG2 in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a major challenge, as the rapid human population growth implies that the demand for major cereals will increase three-fold while that of animal-sourced food (ASF) will double by 2050 (Thornton, 2010; van Ittersum et al, 2016). The alarming incidence of food insecurity and undernutrition due to micronutrient deficiency in SSA is associated with limited dietary diversity among households (Rajendran et al, 2017). Tanzania is a typical example of a country facing challenges where limited dietary diversity is common among disadvantaged urban and rural poor households (Alphonce, 2017; Chegere & Stage, 2020; Wenban-Smith et al, 2016). In Tanzania, dietary diversity is surprisingly limited in the “breadbasket” regions which are key for food
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