The Role of Agricultural Market Intermediaries on Poverty Reduction in Njombe.
Pokhrel and Thapa, (2007) and Nkolimwa, (2010) highlighted that marketing intermediaries in developing countries, including Tanzania, often exploit farmers in rural areas and that farmers frequently receive too low prices for their products. This may contribute to the persistent poverty in rural areas of Tanzania and potentially delay Tanzanian economic growth. Targets to reduce poverty in the rural areas of Tanzania by the year 2015 by 5 to 7% set by the Tanzanian Government may therefore not be feasible (Policy forum, 2010). This study not only demonstrates the exploitation of Irish potato farmers in the Tanzanian Njombe region but also that fair trading in the region is hindered by the lack of the implementation of governmental policies enforcing it. About 155 households purposively sampled from four villages were involved in the current survey; similarly, other market stakeholders were sampled in the chain from Njombe Township and the large markets in Dar-es- Salaam. Collected data were analyzed through Excel spreadsheet as well as SPSS 20.0 program. The results revealed Market intermediaries to have a poverty gap index equals to zero, while farmers in surveyed villages had a positive range in poverty gap with a mean of about 166.05. This result implies that, the higher the range in poverty gap index from zero the higher the range below the poverty line. The implementation of the Agricultural marketing policy (AMP) had remained in an immotile state. The general implication here is that, market intermediaries involved in agricultural marketing as well as the lack of implementation of government AMP have a negative contribution towards poverty alleviation in rural areas.
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