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Web End = Reg Environ Change (2015) 15:12031214
DOI 10.1007/s10113-013-0494-7
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The role of Jatropha curcas cultivation in livelihood strategies of small-scale households in rural Tanzania
Anja Fae Ulrike Grote
Received: 18 September 2012 / Accepted: 9 June 2013 / Published online: 11 July 2013
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Jatropha curcas is cultivated especially by small-scale farm households as a bioenergy plant, but also as a supporting plant for spice production such as vanilla and black pepper. With the increasing worldwide demand for both biofuel and spices, Jatropha cultivation is expected to expand in the future. To explore its role in rural households livelihood strategies, a factor, cluster and a multinomial logit regression analysis were conducted using household data from rural Tanzania. Three different livelihood strategies were identied: (1) subsistence farm households combined with unskilled wage employment,(2) farm households highly specialized in cash crop production, and (3) farm households specialized in cash crop production combined with skilled off-farm employment. While households from Cluster 3 are better-off, those from Cluster 1 are the poorest. The income from cultivation of Jatropha/spices is signicantly higher for the third cluster. However, for poorer households of Cluster 1, the share of income from Jatropha/spices has been quite signicant with up to 30 %. The result of the multinomial logit regression analysis identies human and nancial capital, transaction costs and institutional factors explaining differences in livelihood portfolios. The results help shaping and targeting interventions to improve livelihood strategies of the rural poor in Tanzania.
Keywords Sustainability Bioenergy Cluster analysis
Multinomial logit Agroforestry
Introduction
In order to reduce poverty, development cooperation and research have focused for long on the improvement of livelihood strategies for the rural poor. The livelihood portfolio of households consists of a bundle of activities households engage in to achieve a certain level of welfare (Ellis 1998; Niehof 2004; Scoones 2009). Chambers and Conway (1992, p. 1) described livelihoods as [] environmentally sustainable when it maintains or enhances the local and global assets on which livelihoods depend, and has net benecial effects on other livelihoods. Assets in this regard comprise physical capital...