[CRAFT] Boosting sunflower production in Tanzania

Jackma Enterprises Co Ltd seeks to boost sunflower production in Tanzania and make their supply chain more climate resilient
The Climate Resilient Agribusiness for Tomorrow (CRAFT project) in partnership with Jackma Enterprises Co Ltd seeks to boost the ability of 6,000 smallholder farmers to increase productivity of their sunflower farms.
Tanzania is the second largest producer of sunflower in Africa with an annual output of 350,000 MT, translating into 90,000MT of oil. The sunflower value chain also employs over 2.5M smallholder farmers that are mainly concentrated in the semi-arid and arid zones of Central Tanzania.
Despite the huge potential for sunflower production in Tanzania, productivity remains low with farmers affected by climate change vagaries. Sunflower growing smallholder farmers yield approximately 300kg/acre as compared to the 700kg/acre national average. This is attributed to a number of factors including intermittent rains and heavy rains that cause floods, prolonged drought, use of outmoded farming practices and low investment in modern technologies among others. Additionally, smallholder producers growing sunflower lack access to quality seeds and agro inputs in part due to the high cost associated with quality seeds.
The CRAFT project partnership with Jackma aims to strengthen the linkage between the 6,000 sunflower smallholder farmers and Jackma enterprises thereby enabling the company to not only meet their sunflower oil market demand but increase sunflower farmer’s productivity by 50% by 2022.