Agro-pastoral communities have been regulating their livelihood assets in response to global climate change. This paper analyzes the livelihood assets owned by the agro-pastoral communities and how they are used to enhance community resilience so as to reduce vulnerability. Data were collected from 411 agro-pastoralists in five districts of northern and central Tanzania. The analysis was based on indices constructed from carefully selected indicators of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Results indicated that the agropastoralists in northern Tanzania were more vulnerable to current climate risks than those of central Tanzania. Therefore, the paper recommends that stakeholders create opportunities for non-farm livelihood options to improve the cash income among agro-pastoralists.

Abstract:The study was conducted to determine farmers' preferential choice decision of alternative cassava value chain strands and as well as factors behind such decisions in Morogoro rural District, Tanzania. Factor analysis was first used to reduce and identify the factors (variables for further analysis whereby the factors with highest eigen-value were applied to develop factor scores to measure the attitudinal variables. Results indicate that farmers have positive risk attitude towards participation in the alternative cassava value chain strands for commercialization. A count data model known as Poisson model was applied to determine the factors which influenced this attitude. Results indicated that farm size, experience, femaleheaded households and land-holding had influenced the farmers' preferential choice decision.Recommendations for enhancing farmers' participation in profitable cassava value chain strands are strengthening coordination, provision of improved cassava varieties and introduction of cassava processing technologies.

Carrots are emerging as a crop of choice among many smallholder farmers due to thier affordable management schedules, quick maturing and high returns per acre; thus improving directly their livelihood. Despite its potentiality, it is not clearly known how the crop farming contributes to the household livelihoods among farmers in the study area. This cross-sectional study explored the contribution of carrot farming on the households’ livelihood in Arumeru district, Arusha Tanzania. The study employed a multistage sampling technique to select 150 smallholder farmers. Semi-structured questionnaires were used in data collection and then analysed by descriptive statistics, profit gross margin and sustainable livelihood analysis. The study results determine that profit generated in carrot farming was approximately 23.1% gross profit margin per acre. This implies that it is a profitable activity in the study area. More, the results show that carrot farming enhances farmers’ livelihoods through improving access and control to human asset. The study recommends that promotion of carrot farming should be sustainably to accommodate poverty eradication strategies among households. The other stakeholders should invest efforts in promoting carrot farming which is evidenced to improve people’s livelihood. More, financial services should be accessible and reliable to facilitate the farming processes. Moreover, extension officers should invest their efforts in providing necessary trainings to farmers. Much more, the study recommends more research on the welfare and postharvest losses of carrot farming in the study area.

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Climate change is seriously impacting the well-being of rural agro-pastoralists whose main livelihoods depend on rainfed agriculture. This study examined the factors that influence farmers' decisions to climate change adaptation measures. The study sampled 411 agro-pastoralist farmers and used factor analysis to extract correlated and uncorrelated adjustment strategies. These strategies include; Crop diversification, livestock diversification, small scale irrigation, rain-water harvesting and off-farm activities were found to be the adaptation strategies extracted by factor analysis as dependent variables. Results obtained by the study show that the five coefficients of the variables identified were negative while three were positive, suggesting that the propensity (tendency) of adapting a practice is conditioned by whether or not a practice in the subset has been adapted. Moreover, it is clear that in central and northern zones of Tanzania, age and access to communication media are strongly determined the decisions to adaptation strategies to climate change among the agro-pastoralists. Therefore, the paper recommends for designing policies that reflect the differences in ecology among agro-pastoralists.