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“Life was so tough,” Evenule Joram said, recalling his family’s daily diet of cooked taro roots and scant, sometimes sour, milk. Despite their hard work, Evenule and his wife Rebecka failed for years to earn a living wage on their smallholder farm in southwestern Tanzania where they grow bananas, coffee and tea and raise dairy cows.
Profits from their crops were minimal at best and, Evenule said, they didn’t possess the knowledge or resources to keep the cows they owned healthy. As a result, the animals’ milk production was meager, offering just enough milk, on the best days, to feed the couple’s six children. There was rarely enough milk to sell to others.
The lack of structure in the dairy sector in Tanzania has contributed to the challenges Evenule, Rebecka and tens of thousands of smallholders like them have faced over the years. Historically, dairy farmers in East Africa have operated in disorganized groups, pooling their milk to sell in informal markets.
In a country where more than 26 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, malnutrition is still a significant health problem, particularly in infants and young children: Tanzania has one of the highest burdens of undernourished children in East and Southern Africa, with 34 percent of children under 5 stunted, or experiencing limited growth caused by undernutrition.
Dairy products have nutritional characteristics that make them an almost ideal food for addressing malnutrition. Moreover, dairy is part of a diversified diet, defined by the World Health Organization as a diet that includes foods from several of the main food groups. A diversified diet is key to improving child survival and promoting healthy growth and development — and a diversified diet benefits adults, too.
Recognizing that a thriving dairy sector that includes cooperative and equitable participation by smallholder farmers can address poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity, Heifer Tanzania has long been working with partner organizations and governmental agencies to transform this informal sector into a commercial opportunity for smallholders.
Today, with help from the Tanzania Milk Processing Project, delivered in partnership with Tanzanian governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations, private-sector institutions, the Sokoine University of Agriculture and many community-based farmer producer organizations, Rebecka and Evenule are prospering, and other smallholder farmers like them around the country are, too.
Modeled after the successful East Africa Dairy Development Project, which ran from 2008 to 2018 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Tanzania Milk Processing Project increased and stabilized the incomes of smallholder dairy farmers in Tanzania through education, community-building, enhanced milk productivity, expanded and improved infrastructure and better access to reliable, high-value markets. At the same time, the project ensured that processors have access to a consistent and increased supply of high-quality milk.
For Rebecka and Evenule, the project, implemented between 2019 and 2022, was life-changing. Training, often facilitated by the farmers themselves through self-help groups formed by the project, helped farmers address the spectrum of challenges they once faced. For example, learning about animal nutrition and hygiene helped Rebecka and Evenule enhance their cows’ quality of life and improve the volume and quality of the milk they produce.
“Now there are no diseases,” said Evenule. “There are no ticks. The cows are extremely clean.” Training in sustainable agriculture practices, such as using crop residues — the plant materials left behind after a harvest, like husks, leaves and stems — to feed their cattle and using manure to fertilize their crops helped farmers minimize waste, produce nutrient-dense, chemical-free feed for their animals and enrich the soil.
“These beautiful bananas that you see are from the manure and fertilizers that have come from these cows,” Evenule said. “They have grown well because of that.” The couple and other farmers in their region also gained easy access to veterinary care through Heifer’s community agrovet system.
Implemented in partnership with Tanzania’s major milk processors, including ASAS Dairies and Galaxy Food and Beverage Company, and smaller, intermediary processors, such as the Nronga Women’s Dairy Co-op, the project also addressed another seemingly insurmountable obstacle that smallholder dairy farmers in the region had long faced: access to a reliable market.
“Sales in the past were incredibly difficult since there were no buyers,” Evenule said. “Now, there are.”
Before, even when there were buyers, getting the milk to them — safely — was a challenge. Many farmers had no choice but to travel long distances, sometimes by foot, to deliver their cows’ milk. This often resulted in milk losses due to spoilage en route. At best, it forced farmers to sell their milk as quickly as possible for below-market prices.
The Tanzania Milk Processing Project initiated the construction of new milk collection centers, which shrank the distances farmers were forced to travel. It also provided farmers with milk cans and milk can carriers, making it easier for them to deliver milk to their buyers. Five milk delivery trucks were provided to processors and farmers’ cooperatives to help transport milk from the farms to the processors. Rates of spoilage dropped and, at the dairy collection centers, milk rejection rates dropped, too. Finally, food safety and hygiene training provided to workers at new and existing collection centers helped keep milk fresh after it left the farmers’ hands and continues to preserve quality today.
Heifer Tanzania has supported more than 1,398,000 rural farming families since 1974, with initiatives that have significantly contributed to the country’s 1.3 million dairy cattle population and improved dairy market. This work has included the development of 22 milk collection centers across the country with a total capacity of 70,000 liters per day, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s total collection capacity.
Through the Tanzania Milk Processing Project alone the volume of milk collected for the formal market rose from 55,817 liters per day to 129,000 liters per day. As a result, the project participants — 54,072 of the country’s smallholder dairy farmers — increased their monthly household income by 36 percent.
The enhanced economic stability and food security these farmers, like Evenule and Rebecka, are experiencing ripple out, impacting and empowering others along the dairy value chain. In the process, communities and their economies are strengthened.
“What I have observed in the market lately is people selling milk,” said Evenule. “If not for Heifer, ASAS would not have come here.”
“Various places have improved a lot, and even I … have exceeded my income.”
There is so much more to be done. Our work strengthening Tanzania’s dairy sector continues today with our Tanzania Inclusive Processor-Producer Partnerships project, a three-year dairy development project aimed at catalyzing the inclusive transformation of the dairy sector by promoting public-private investments to increase milk aggregation, sustainably scale farm-level production and productivity, grow dairy processing capacity and increase demand for milk and milk products.
The project targets improving the incomes of 100,000 smallholder dairy farmers and is implemented in partnership with the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank, Dairy Nourishes Africa and Tanager, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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