Factors Influencing Sustainability On Agriculture Projects In Tanzania

Many studies discuss agriculture in macro level.Recently,many young people decide to engage on agriculture projects,not only for just food security as elder generation did,but in strategical and technological way of practising.Currently,Tanzania is on industrialization policy,aim is to transform people's economy from low income to middle income.In Tanzania agriculture industry plays a great role in country's economy,however it faces a lot of challenges.Agriculture industry have been practiced locally in decades and many households do it just for food security.There is a need to encourage agriculture projects in order to transform agriculture from local level into highly and potential sustainable level.This study aims to identify factors influencing sustainability on agriculture projects,evaluating them to see which are the most important compared to others and lastly to suggest which strategies can be followed to improve sustainability on agriculture projects in Tanzania.Agriculture projects being practised mostly by literate people can generate more attention and inspiration to young generation who are unemployed especially those who are fresh from schools and colleges.Different literature discusses various factors influencing sustainability on agriculture projects,with the help of those literatures this study identifies sustainability factors and categorized them into three sustainability dimensions of economic,environmental and social.Capital,marketing,innovation&technology,education&knowledge,infrastructure,stakeholder's management,natural resources management and government policy®ulations are the factors that have been identified in this study where some factors have been interacted in more than one dimension.taking an example of government policy®ulations.The study uses both primary and secondary data,where secondary data obtained from intensive literature review,websites etc.and primary data obtained from questionnaire distribution to agriculture stakeholders including agriculture experts,project managers,farmers and employees.AHP method used to evaluate the finalized factors,where 28 questionnaires were distributed and 20 questionnaires complete filled.With the help of AHP templets software developed by Goepel(2013)which works under Microsoft Excel where group decision makers can input their different opinions and calculated using geometric mean method,the data was synthesized and results obtained.The software can calculate the Weights,Normalized Principal Eigenvector,Geometric Consistency Index.Consensus,and Consistence Ratio.Among the three sustainability dimensions(economic,environmental and social),the results reveal that economic sustainability is the most important factor followed by environmental sustainability and social sustainability with score of 44%,41%and 15%respectively.Based on the results,Capital is the most important factor for economic sustainability on agriculture projects in Tanzania followed by marketing,government policy®ulations,education&training,infrastructure and technology&innovation.However,the findings of this study reveals that for environmental sustainability natural resources management is the most important factor followed by government policy®ulations and technology&innovation.Moreover,in social sustainability stakeholder's management and government policy®ulations were compared where the results reveal that stakeholder's management is the most important factor.Finally,the strategies for improving sustainability on agriculture projects in Tanzania suggested to all sustainability dimensions including strengthening financial agriculture institutions in Tanzania,accurate information on marketing&value addition,attracting foreign investors,supportive government policies®ulations and having consistence plan,increasing national level agriculture exhibitions,conferences and workshop,collaboration between agriculture stakeholders and government together with formalization of agriculture industry to graduates.