Farmers’ heterogeneous preferences for traits of improved varieties: Informing demand-oriented crop breeding in Tanzania

Regassa, M.D., Miriti, P.K., Melesse, M.B. 2024. Farmers’ heterogeneous preferences for traits of improved varieties: Informing demand-oriented crop breeding in Tanzania. A Poster presented at the CGIAR Unitiative on Market Intelligence WP1-WP2 Workshop, 14-18 October 2024, Harare, Zimbabwe.

This study uses choice experiment data from a random sample of 1299 Tanzanian farmers to analyze preferences for traits of groundnut varieties, trade-offs in the valuation of attributes, and heterogeneity in preferences. Groundnut farmers have strong preferences for varieties that are high-yielding, tolerant to environmental stresses, early-maturing, red-colored, and fetching high sale prices in grain markets. Farmers are willing to pay the highest premium for high-yielding and tolerance attributes. Further, a latent class analysis identifies considerable heterogeneity in farmers’ trait preferences. A specific distinction is between consumption-oriented and market-oriented farmer classes. The results have important implications for demand-driven variety development and targeted dissemination of improved varieties. Breeding programs need to consider the heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and weigh the potential market size before scarce resources are committed to improving an attribute. The results highlight that trait-based promotion and marketing of varieties may offer an effective strategy to promote improved varieties.