Profitability of oil palm farming in Kigoma Rural District, Tanzania
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Date
2023
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AJOL
Abstract
Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is one of the world’s most efficient oil-bearing crop. The crop
has great contribution to the economy of the world’s leading producers, that is, Indonesia and
Malaysia. In Tanzania however, the leading region in oil palm farming is facing high rate of
poverty with 48.9% of its population living below the poverty line, that is, below 1.9 USD per
day. Further, the country’s annual palm oil production of 16 593 tons is short of the demand of
364 800 tons per annum. Based on that, the study aimed to determine profit attained from oil palm
production systems in Kigoma rural district. A cross sectional design was adopted and a semi
structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 260 respondents randomly selected from
five villages in Kigoma rural district. Descriptive statistics was used for analysis of demographic
data and profitability was determined by Gross margin. Demographic profile shows that men own
90% of the farms, 70% of oil palm farmers are in the active age of 20 - 60 years, 90% are married,
93% depend solely in agriculture and 92% of farmers have acquired primary education. Further
findings show that farmers have adopted local, improved and mixed production systems by 73%,
2% and 25% respectively. And that at an average of 96 oil palm trees per farmer at an area of
about 1.7 hectares, these farmers earn less than TZS 1 million per hectare. Furthermore, they
fetch a gross margin of 7%, 35% and 19% from the three systems respectively. It was noted that,
inadequate cultivation of Tenera variety oil palms and poor management practices are greater
hindrance to higher productivity and profitability of oil palm farming in the study area. The
government, investors and farmers must put more efforts to overcome those challenges.
Description
Tanzania Journal of Agricultural Sciences (2023) Vol. 22 No. 2, 211-221
Keywords
Oil palm, production systems, profit (gross margin)
Citation
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/tjags/article/view/266555#: