Farmers’ perceptions on alternative agricultural advisory service providers in Tanzania

Farmers’ perceptions on the effectiveness of advisory services are very crucial for proper targeting of the services towards real needs of the ultimate users. This study focused on the perceptions of farmers working with five different advisory service providers ranging from public providers, non-governmental organizations and farmer-to-farmer extension. Farmers without access to any type of advisory services were included in the study as a control. Principal component analysis method was employed and six principal components were extracted. With this method, it was possible to visualize distribution of farmers in terms of the service providers they work with under different principal components. The results showed that farmers working with multiple providers, ICT-based providers and NGO had access to diverse advisory services. Results of multiple linear regression also showed that contrary to expectations, distance from the farm to tarmac road positively influenced timing of agricultural advice.