Beyond Awareness: Indigenous Crops, Household Diets, and Value Addition in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands

Abstract

Abstract Indigenous crops offer nutritional and food security, yet their household integration remains limited. This study, conducted in 2024 with 716 households across Iringa and Njombe, examined whether nutritional awareness is associated with the adoption, consumption, and processing of indigenous crops. While 64.8% of households acknowledged their nutritional benefits, 25.4% engaged in processing, hindered by inadequate skills, infrastructure, and access to technologies. Consumption was strongly linked to household production, though larger farms tended to prioritise high-yield commercial crops, thereby limiting their cultivation. Adoption varied by geography, while education, gender, and age had little effect. The multivariable model showed that place-based and land-allocation factors are stronger predictors than awareness. These findings reveal that awareness alone is insufficient; meaningful change requires stronger extension services, promoting localised policies, improved market access, and investment in value addition to empower smallholder farmers and elevate these crops as central pillars to dietary diversity, food security, and climate-resilient agriculture.