Self-Made Farmers and Sustainable Change?

We studied livelihood changes and poverty dynamics over a twenty-five-year period in two villages in central Tanzania. The villages were, from the early 1990s and 2000s, strikingly poor with between 50 per cent and 55 per cent of families in the poorest wealth groups. Twenty-five years later much has changed: people have become substantially wealthier, with 64 per cent and 71 per cent in the middle wealth groups. The new wealth had been generated locally, from farming, particularly of sunflowers as a cash crop. This goes against a conventional view of small-scale farming in Tanzania as being stagnant or unproductive. The area of land farmed per family has increased, almost doubling in one village. People have made money, which they invest in mechanized farming, improved housing, education of their children, livestock, and consumer goods. Improved infrastructure and local entrepreneurs have played key roles in the area’s transformation. Locally identified wealth rankings showed that most villagers, those in the middle wealth groups and above, can now support themselves from their land, which is a notable change to a time when 71 per cent and 82 per cent in each village respectively depended on casual labour for their survival. This change has come at a cost to the environment. By 2016, the village forests have largely gone and been replaced by farms. Farmers were concerned that the climate was turning drier because of deforestation. Satellite data confirms extensive forest loss in this location. Studying the mundane—the material used in roofs, the size of farms, and so on—made it possible to trace and understand the radical transition the area has experienced.