Drivers of smallholders’ cattle commercialisation in rural Tanzania and implications for leveraging opportunities in the beef sector

The linkage between agricultural commercialisation and improvements in household welfare has received a significant attention in literature. Despite the growing interest, livestock commercialisation particularly beef cattle which is among the principal sources of meat protein in Tanzania is inadequately elucidated. Subsequently, there is a paucity of empirical evidence on the drivers of commercialisation and policy implications to guide beef cattle sector in Tanzania. This study was delved to fill this research gap by determining the factors influencing beef cattle commercialisation among smallholder farmers. Cross-sectional survey was used whereby a multistage sampling method was used to obtain 400 randomly selected farmers in Arusha region. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to solicit information from the smallholder farmers between September and October 2024. Fractional probit model was used to determine the factors influencing beef cattle commercialisation among the farmers. The results showed that, age of the farmer and access to extension services are important determinants of beef commercialisation (α = 0.01). Moreover, the results revealed that, farmers’ sex, membership in farmer’s group, distance to nearest main road, tropical livestock unit (TLU), earning of off farm income and shock occurrence statistically significant influenced commercialisation (α = 0.01, α = 0.05 and α = 0.1). This study highlights the role of agricultural extension services to smallholder farmers’ commercialisation decision. It therefore recommends a provision of extension services to reach the remotely cattle farmers to boost commercialisation. Similarly, the study asserts the need for interventions to ease the enabling infrastructure such as rural roads and gender sensitive programs for cattle producers to enhance commercialisation for harnessing emerging opportunities in beef sector.