Abstract:
The main objective of this study was to assess the effect of fresh banana supply chain on performance of smallholder farmers and traders. The specific objectives were therefore, to examine the structure of fresh banana supply chain so as to identify key actors and their functions, examine the performance of the key actors in fresh banana supply chain, determine the influence of human capital on performance of fresh banana, and also to establish the influence of the relationships among key actors on performance of fresh banana supply chain.
The study was carried out in Rombo district in Kilimanjaro region and Mabibo market in Dar es Salaam. Simple random and snowball sampling technique used to select 210 respondents whereas questionnaire was used to collect data from smallholder farmers, assemblers, wholesalers and retailers while qualitative data was gathered using interview.
For the first objective of this study, the method of analysis used was Supply Chain Analysis (SCA) and content analysis, whereas for the second objective, the method of analysis used was descriptive statistics and independent T-test. For the third and fourth objective descriptive statistics and multiple linear regressions analysis was used to analyze the data.
The findings from the analysis indicated that the structure of fresh banana supply chain are operated in four stages which are input supply, production, marketing and consumption, also findings indicate that there is uneven distribution of gross margin among actors smallholder farmers being the least advantaged actor. The study findings further revealed that the age, education level, experience, frequency of contact and duration in relationship exhibit significant relationship with performance. On the other side, relationship density exhibited no significant relationship performance in terms of gross margin. This study recommends that more research involving fresh banana supply chain and specifically a comparative study making comparison between different regions in Tanzania
