Agriculture in Tanzania

Mining earns Tanzania the most money abroad; farming employs the most people at home. About 65 per cent of working Tanzanians were employed in agriculture in 2025, on the World Bank's modelled estimate, and agriculture, forestry and fishing together produced 22.9 per cent of GDP. The share of GDP has drifted down, from 25.3 per cent in 2020, as other sectors grew faster, but no other activity touches as many households.

The 2019/20 National Sample Census of Agriculture counted 7.8 million farming households out of 12.0 million in the country, or 65.3 per cent. Almost all of them are smallholders. Two-thirds grow crops only; a third keep livestock as well.

The country feeds itself, and more. In April 2026 the Minister of Agriculture, Daniel Chongolo, told Parliament that food-crop production in the 2024/25 season reached 23.8 million tonnes against a national requirement of 18.3 million, a food self-sufficiency ratio of 130 per cent. The surplus is sold abroad: maize and rice earned USD 160 million in the year to April 2026.

Most farming is for food, and most of it depends on the rains. Maize is the staple across most of the mainland, eaten as ugali. Rice comes from the river valleys and irrigated schemes, the Kilombero valley in Morogoro among them. Cassava, sorghum and millet carry the drier country, bananas the wet slopes of Kilimanjaro and Kagera, and beans and other pulses are grown almost everywhere.

The breadbaskets are in the south and west. Ruvuma is one of the main maize-surplus regions, and Rukwa and Katavi are big maize and rice growers. The drier central plateau around Dodoma and Singida grows sunflower, pressed for cooking oil.

The gap is yield. The Ministry of Agriculture's own plan puts average maize yields at about 1.75 tonnes a hectare, against a potential of 7.5 tonnes on rain-fed land. Tanzania imports nearly 95 per cent of its fertiliser, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and prices rise with the distance from Dar es Salaam port.

Tanzania's export crops are unusually spread out. Each belongs to a particular part of the country and has its own regulator, a crop board. Several, cashew and coffee among them, are sold by farmers' cooperatives at auctions.

The Bank of Tanzania groups seven of them as traditional exports: tobacco, cashew, coffee, cotton, sisal, cloves and tea. Together they earned USD 1.71 billion in the year to April 2026. Horticulture, oilseeds, cereals and cocoa add almost another billion. Tobacco has been the largest single crop export in each of the last two years to April, ahead of cashew.

Coffee. Grown by about 320,000 smallholders, who produce some 90 per cent of the crop, according to the US Department of Agriculture's 2025 report. About 61 per cent is arabica, on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and Arusha and in the southern highlands of Mbeya, Songwe, Njombe and Mbinga in Ruvuma; the rest is robusta, grown in Kagera near Lake Victoria. In the north and west it is typically grown among bananas; in the south, more often on its own. The harvest runs from July to October.

Cashew. The crop of the southern coast, grown mainly in Mtwara, Lindi and Ruvuma, with Tanga and Pwani. The 2025/26 season produced a record 617,683 tonnes, up 17 per cent, but short of the government's 700,000-tonne target. The Cashew Board aims for a million tonnes by 2030/31. Most of the crop still leaves the country as raw nuts, to be shelled in India and Vietnam.

Tobacco. Grown by smallholders on contract to leaf-buying companies, mainly in Tabora, Songwe, Katavi and Ruvuma. The Tobacco Board counted 92,811 registered farmers in 2023/24, and most of the crop is flue-cured Virginia. Curing burns large amounts of fuelwood, which is why the crop is tied up with the fate of the miombo woodland.

Cotton. The cash crop of the Lake Zone. It is grown in 17 regions, but Simiyu is expected to supply about 60 per cent of the harvest; Shinyanga is the other big grower. Output swings with the rains: it fell to 149,361 tonnes in 2024/25 and recovered to 222,057 tonnes in 2025/26.

Sisal. The oldest commercial crop still grown. The German agronomist Richard Hindorf brought in the first plants in 1893, and the 62 that survived the journey were planted at Kikogwe, near Pangani in Tanga. By independence in 1961 Tanganyika was the world's largest sisal producer. Synthetic fibres, and the nationalisation of the estates after 1967, brought the industry down, and it now earns a fraction of what it once did.

Tea. Grown in six regions and 12 districts, from Rungwe, Mufindi and Njombe in the southern highlands to Lushoto and Muheza in the Usambara mountains, and Bukoba and Muleba in Kagera. According to the Tea Board, about half the 23,806 hectares under tea belongs to large estates and half to smallholders. Export earnings have fallen every year since 2022, to USD 11.4 million.

Cloves. Zanzibar's crop, grown mostly on Pemba and sold through the state's trading corporation. Earnings follow the harvest, which swings widely from year to year.

Sugar. Grown on the big irrigated estates: Kilombero and Mtibwa in Morogoro, TPC near Moshi in Kilimanjaro, Kagera Sugar, and newer estates at Bagamoyo and Mkulazi. For decades Tanzania imported sugar. In October 2025 the Sugar Board's director general, Kenneth Bengesi, said production had passed 600,000 tonnes against household demand of about 550,000, and that the country had begun exporting.

Avocado. The fastest-growing newcomer, grown for export in Njombe and the southern highlands and shipped mainly to Europe.

The herds are huge. The 2019/20 census counted 33.9 million cattle, 24.5 million goats, 8.5 million sheep and 87.7 million chickens, almost all of them on smallholdings. Cows gave 3.1 billion litres of milk that year.

Cattle are wealth, savings and insurance as much as food, above all among the Sukuma of Shinyanga and Simiyu and the pastoralist peoples of the north.

The government's target for the sector is called Agenda 10/30. It is often misreported as 10 per cent of GDP; it is a growth target. The Ministry of Agriculture's roadmap aims to lift the growth rate of crop farming from 5.4 per cent in 2021 to 10 per cent by 2030, through irrigation, better seed, fertiliser, extension officers, block farms for young farmers, and more private investment. It names 13 priority crops, from maize and rice to cashew, coffee, avocado and sisal, and puts the cost at about TZS 39 trillion.

Spending has risen to match. The Ministry of Agriculture's budget went from TZS 294 billion in 2021/22 to TZS 1.248 trillion in 2024/25, and in May 2025 the then minister, Hussein Bashe, asked Parliament for TZS 1.24 trillion for 2025/26.

Where the value is added. Most of the cashew crop is exported raw, and coffee, cotton and tobacco leave with little processing. Each crop board has a plan to process more at home. The Ministry's plan says the same thing about almost every crop.

How crops are sold. Most cash crops are sold through cooperatives and auctions run under the crop boards, which are meant to protect farmers from being underpaid at the farm gate. Farmers and buyers argue about delays in payment, deductions, and the prices the system produces.

The weather. Almost all farming depends on rain, and a bad season shows up in national figures within a year. The fall in cotton in 2024/25 is one example. Irrigation is the answer Agenda 10/30 relies on most.