Women at the Forefront: Creating Awareness on Climate-Resilient Varieties to Transform Informal Seed Trade in Tanzania

Atupokile Mwakatwila^1*Justus Ochieng¹Esther Cheyo¹Joseph Kimisha²Devotha Mchau²Agness Ndunguru²Edith Kadege²Anthony Bujiku²Anatolius Kabyemela²Shadrack Mbapila²Julius Mbiu²Radegunda Kessy¹Jean Claude Rubyogo³

• ¹International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Arusha, Tanzania
• ²Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute, Dodoma, Tanzania
• ³International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Nairobi, Kenya

Access to and utilization of quality seeds has been a significant challenge facing Tanzania's agricultural sector especially for open pollinated crops such as common beans, sorghum, and groundnuts. Marketplace traders purchase grains for sale from farmers who constantly rely on old varieties, that may have lost their effectiveness in combating emerging challenges such as pests and diseases and climate change and variability. Despite improved climate resilient varieties being available, limited promotional efforts to increase their adoption have been done among marketplace traders who are mainly women. Moreover, the current promotion and awareness creation efforts by public and private partners often target smallholder farmers with low success of increasing adoption and replacement of old varieties. This study explored the preferred approaches by marketplace traders for receiving information about newly released climate resilient varieties to enable them to switch to selling grains of new climate resilient varieties. Quantitative data was collected from 657 marketplace traders (372 female and 285 male), and qualitative data was collected from 180 marketplace traders across rural and urban markets, with women comprising 58% of them. Content and ethnographic methods were employed to analyze qualitative data while Descriptive analysis and Multivariate probit model (MVP) were used to analyze quantitative data. Findings show that marketplace traders have limited information about the existence of the new climate resilient varieties but are motivated to receive information about the new climate resilient varieties due to the associated supply, quality and yield advantages. Local radio stations, in person meetings, posters placed in the local markets and WhatsApp groups are preferred channels for sharing information about new climate resilient varieties with the marketplace traders and some farmers. Due to low smart phone ownership, women marketplace traders preferred phone calls and text messages, local radios and in person meetings for accessing varietal information. A single approach is not a one-size-fits-all and may work in some context but not in others. Therefore, prioritizing a bundle of effective approaches that are preferred by women to share information about climate resilient varieties would have intended adoption impacts.