Farm and Household Characteristics and their Influence on Participation Intensity for Avocado Farming in Njombe

Abstract

Avocado has emerged as one of the most rapidly expanding horticultural enterprises in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, yet the extent to which smallholder farmers commit themselves to the crop varies sharply from one household to the next. This study examines the farm and household characteristics that shape the intensity of smallholder participation in avocado farming in Njombe Region. A cross-sectional research design was adopted and primary data were collected from 305 randomly selected smallholder avocado farming households in Njombe Town Council and Njombe District Council using a structured questionnaire administered through the KoBoToolbox platform. Households were classified into three participation intensity categories on the basis of avocado tree counts, namely low (5–99 trees), moderate (100–249 trees) and high (250 trees and above). A multinomial logit model with the low intensity class as the base outcome was fitted to identify the factors influencing the probability of falling into each intensity class, and average marginal effects were computed for ease of interpretation. The results showed that supplemental irrigation, registration in marketing groups, formal education of the household head, age of the household head, household head gender and access to credit were the strongest positive drivers of high-intensity participation, while marital status, planting of the main commercial variety (Hass) and the presence of off-farm income also operated more straightforwardly across the two upper categories. The marginal effect of supplemental irrigation on the probability of being a high-intensity farmer was 0.230, the largest of any covariate, while registration in a marketing group raised the same probability by 0.168. The findings suggest that the transition from low to high intensity in avocado farming in Njombe is not driven by farm size or experience alone, but by a coordinated bundle of institutional, infrastructural and human-capital assets. Policy support that targets these specific assets, particularly irrigation investment and farmer-group formation, is therefore likely to be the most effective in deepening smallholder participation in the avocado subsector.