Agriculture in Tanzania - Sisal, Soil, and Subsistence Farming

Preface: This is a long entry, but hopefully it gives some impression of the challenges faced by average Tanzanians and how our work, as Peace Corps volunteers, fits in with the Tanzanian government's effort to improve the livelihoods of their people.

Last Thursday the Peace Corps environmental trainees traveled down the road from the Ministry of Agricultural Training Institute ("MATI"), where we have been attending group classes, to the Mlingano Agricultural Research Institute ("Mlingano ARI") - a sprawling collection of plantation style buildings and laboratories dating back to 1934, when Tangayika was under effective colonial rule, as a protectorate of Britain after World War I, and sisal was the defacto cash crop of choice, as a result of the earlier German colonial influence.

While the market for sisal fell precipitously in the 1970s, with the development of synthetic textiles and the concurrent rise of Brazilian and Mexican sisal production, sisal is still one of the principle cash crops here in the Tanga Region, and along much of Tanzania's coastline. For Mlingano ARI, which was originally established to help boost the country's sisal production, the plant remains at the core of the institute's research. In fact, Mlingano ARI can rightly claim to be one of the foremost centers for the development of new and improved sisal varieties, with a collection of over 120 different varieties, the largest in the world.

Today, Mlingano ARI is working on diversifying the potential uses of sisal, with current research on the plant's use for biofuels, alcohol (similar to how agave is used to produce tequila), livestock fodder, and an array of random chemical products.

If, like I was prior to coming to Tanzania, you aren't familiar with sisal, the plant indeed is similar in appearance to agave, only larger, with some varieties growing to five to six feet high. The base of the plant looks like a giant pineapple, from which dozens of long, green spikes grow up and out of. Sisal is not a fast growing crop, apparently taking four to five years to grow into harvestable size, whereafter it can be selectively harvested from for the next eight years, before the plant's potential is exhausted. Thus one of Mlingano ARI's other current research efforts is to produce a variety of sisal that can grow to harvestable size in as little as a year. Another reason for the Mlingano ARI's current research endeavors is due to the fact that only roughly 15 to 20 percent of the sisal plant can be extracted to produce raw fiber, the rest being a complete loss in the production process.

Sisal Processing - The Ngomeni Kamba Factory

Though the origins of sisal in Tanzania trace back to the days when German colonial administrators helped form massive sisal plantations, a manner of cultivation which continues today at the hands of large foreign investors, sisal production is nevertheless an important part of everyday life in the small villages us Peace Corps trainees are living in. Earlier in the week the trainees living in Mkanyageni Village, including Merritt and I, had the opportunity to visit the Ngomeni factory, in the neighboring village of Bagamoyo, and see sisal fiber being spun into rope, twine, and other sisal-based products, like rugs, doormats, even these nifty green and yellow hand bags that were a special order for the Chama Cha Mapinduzi ("CCM," or the "Party of the Revolution," the ruling party here in Tanzania).

While the relics of the colonial era litter the Tanzanian countryside, at the Ngomeni factory, those relics are actually still in use, pumping out spun sisal now more than seven decades after they first went on-line, though our tour guide noted that some machines hadn't been turned on in over a year, due to lack of demand. Altogether the factory had probably two dozen Tanzanians at work on the day we visited, not including its main offices, which we didn't get a chance to go inside.

Though there were lots of side buildings within the factory complex, current productions appeared to be largely confined to one building, an open-ended, tin-roofed, cement structure, with one long row of machines whirring away. As raw sisal fiber was fed into the first machine, an oily chemical was added to help in the combing process, which occurred in the next three or four machines, as sisal was trained into increasingly large, loosely spun bales. At the end of the production line, the final machine stripped tiny threads off the bales, running them into long strands of twine that were then wound onto drums. The drums of twine could apparently be marketed as is, or combined, with increasing thickness, to make other products, like rope.

The trip to the Ngomeni factory provided an interesting addition to my nascent perception of agriculture here in Tanzania. As the idle machines at the Ngomeni factory evidence, Tanzania's continued dependence on sisal production demonstrates how the country has largely failed to progress beyond the colonial period, in terms of developing its agricultural sector beyond a few cash crops, which, like sisal, are not even all that economically fruitful. For the lion's share of Tanzanian farmers, their work barely rises above subsistence farming, and in this enterprise, they are largely on their own, with little assistance from the state. Though the government has recently launched its "Kulima Kwanza" ("Farming First") initiative, which is intended to increase educational and financial support for these types of farmers, a year into the program seems to show little institutional change.

The State of Agriculture in Tanzania - Example of Mlingano ARI's Soil Science Research

Take for instance Mlingano ARI's current organization: despite being under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, a lack of state-level financial support has forced the institute to find other sources of funding, such as international investors looking for site-specific soil and fertility analysis. In addition to being one of the leading in-country authorities on the cultivation of sisal, Mlingano ARI is also known to have the largest, most operable, and best staffed soil laboratories in the country, not to mention the only one internationally certified for quality control purposes. There are seven similar institutes in Tanzania working under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, but apparently their facilities and equipment are largely outdated and understaffed. With six PhDs on staff, Mlingano ARI is the exception among its partner institutions.

With its financial independence, Mlingano ARI has also gained a large degree of operational independence, as reflected by its willingness to work for private parties. To hear the director of Mlingano ARI describe the situation, it sounds as if the institute views working autonomously as a means of ensuring the institute's continued operation, given the perpetual uncertainty surrounding national agro-politics. The decision is certainly understandable given the lack of support the institute has historically received from the state, but it does raise questions about what the institute is doing to support small-scale subsistence farmers, the principle, if not the only available, profession for the average Tanzanian.

This concern with the institute's work was even directly expressed to our trainee group in Mkanyageni Village, when we met with a group of the village's young adults. Ranging in age from their early twenties to their late forties, the fifteen or so men and women we talked to expressed the utmost frustration in only being able to "scratch the dirt" with their primitive tools and techniques, thus preventing them from being able to generate any real income from their work besides enough maize to feed their families and perhaps a bag or two to sell away. In this plight, besides their over-arching concern with the availability of enough water, they questioned why they didn't have access to loans with which to buy mechanized equipment, and why MATI and Mlingano ARI weren't doing more to help train them, despite being directly across the road from their village.

But Mlingano ARI is making quite an effort to help such farmers. In addition to farmer field schools, where farmers are given the chance to compare varying crop and fertilizer use on similar plots of land, the institute is working at a much larger level to help in national land use planning and land suitability analysis. Working through its soil analysis lab and a small GIS office, two of the institute's scientists are trying to develop detailed maps of the country that identify site-specific land-suitability guidelines, soil fertility constraints, fertilizer recommendations, and necessary soil conservation practices. This work, still in its early stages, is ultimately intended to be broken down to local and site-specific agricultural recommendations, with the assistance of regional, district and village level governments - and that's where the main obstacle to the institute's work seems to be arising.

As directed by the Ministry of Agriculture, the institute is supposed to supply this information to the district-level governments, which are then charged with disseminating it to farmers through local officials, such as the district "bwana shamba," who is in charge of agricultural development at the district level, as well as village extension officers. And beyond the problems with corruption and complacency, there is a basic shortage of human resources in this respect.

For example, though national policy dictates that there should be an agricultural extension officer working in every village in the country, only about one in four villages actually has such an officer. This deficit amounts to roughly 9,000 agricultural extension officers, a shortage that seems unlikely to be made up anytime soon. So not surprisingly, much of the Mlingano ARI's efforts in this respect are languishing, unforgotten and un-utilized, in district offices around the country.

Implications for the Environment and the People

The result of this gap in the translation of technical information is evident in the group of farmers whom we met in Mkanyageni, who have little knowledge of how to increase productivity in the soil surrounding their village, which is predominantly comprised of clay and woefully short in any kind of organic material. Without this information, these farmers can't make the connection between their cultivation practices and their water shortage problem.

With over a meter of precipitation per year (approx. 1,150 millimeters), the Tanga Region is not nearly as dry as some other parts of Tanzania. But this rain largely falls in two distinct monsoonal periods - a period of long rains from March to May (called "Masika"), followed by a dry period, before another season of short rains from mid-October to mid-December (called "Vuli"). While this precipitation is enough to allow for a wide variety of fruit crops to be grown in the region, most notably oranges, mangoes, banana, and coconut, the seasonality of the rain wreaks havoc on the main staple crop, maize, the primary food staple for most families in the region.

The problem with water in the region is that due to the clay-rich soils, little precipitation infiltrates into the ground, leaving the earth hard and sun-baked just a couple of days after even the heaviest rains. As the soil is compacted and hard, plant roots can't grow deep enough to capture the little moisture that the ground does hold onto. The result is that farmers lose a large part of their maize crop each year in between the rains, and are forced to plant increasingly larger shambas, expending more and more effort, with little if any return. And when not under cultivation, their fields are subject to severe erosion, further denuding the soil of its fertility and greatly degrading the land base.

Adding manure and compost before and after planting, tilling in the unused plant material at the end of the harvest (rather than burning the field), and planting cover crops could all help alleviate the problem, but farmers haven't been educated about these practices, and thus struggle to rise beyond subsistence farming, while also further degrading their available land resources.

So while the first impression might be to question the focus of Mlingano ARI's efforts, in terms of helping the average Tanzanian, the institute's efforts are handicapped from the get go by the problems at the regional and local level, in terms of resources and basic educational services. It must be frustrating for the scientists working there, who seem to genuinely want to help, and who remain cautiously optimistic, despite their sometimes futile efforts.