Determinants of market outlet choices among cattle farmers and implications for fostering participation in rewarding livestock markets in rural Tanzania

Agricultural markets play a crucial role in enhancing smallholder farmers’ participation in markets. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies on market outlet choices among smallholder cattle farmers, particularly in Africa where markets are fragmented and weakly integrated. Subsequently, there is a limited understanding of the drivers influencing the choices of market outlets and implications for fostering beef farmers’ market participation and socio-economic transformation. This study intends to fill this gap by examining the factors determining market outlet decisions among beef farmers in Monduli and Longido districts, Tanzania. Multistage sampling method was employed to identify beef farmers in the selected rural areas. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to solicit data from 400 smallholder cattle farmers selected through a simple random sampling. Analysis of the collected data involved estimation of descriptive statistics and econometric analysis. The multivariate probit regression showed that, age and extension services positively and significantly influenced market outlet choices (p < 0.01). Contrariwise, sex, group membership, distance to the nearest main road, tropical livestock unit (TLU), off-farm income and shock occurrences negatively and significantly influenced market outlet decisions. The findings evince that, agricultural extension services and distance to roads are imperative in influencing smallholder farmers’ market outlet choices. The study asserts the need to bridge extension services and rural infrastructure to enhance beef farmers’ participation in profitable livestock market outlets.