Benefits Associated with Smallholder Farmers’ Participation in Grapes Value Addition: A Case of Dodoma City Jurisdiction, Tanzania

Abstract

This study intended to establish benefits associated with smallholder farmers’ participation in grapes value addition in Dodoma, Tanzania. The study used a cross-sectional research design to get information from respondents. Slovin’s sampling technique was used to get a sample size of 180 respondents. Questionnaire and checklists were the main data collection tools. A gross margin analysis was used to analyse benefits associated with smallholder farmers’ participation in adding value to grapes. Results revealed that profitability differs with the type of value addition practices among smallholder farmers. Raisins were found to have more profit (40%) followed by input usage (16.7%) and the rest were found to have small profit, (10%) for bulk wine and (9% for packing and grading). It was concluded that smallholder farmers who add value to grapes get more profit compared to their counterpart who did not do that. This implies that, there were benefits associated with adding value to grapes. It is recommended that extension services should be provided to smallholder farmers participating in value addition in order to enable them applies adequate value addition methods which will provide them with maximum profit.