Abstract:
This paper analyses the access to agricultural credits for smallholder rice farmers in
ShinyangaRegion- Tanzania. Specifically, it describes thesources of credit facilities available to
the rural area and the factors determining access to agricultural credit in the study area.A multi stage random sampling technique was used. Two district councils that were the largest
producers of rice were purposively sampled; these include Shinyanga and Msalala. A total of 180
rice farming households were selected from the smallholder farmers using a simple random
sampling technique.Data on demographic and farmer-household socioeconomic characteristics
that are likely to affect small-scale farmers' decisions to take out agricultural credit were
collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. In this study, descriptive statistics and the logit
model were used. The study revealed that sources of agricultural credit were cooperative
institutions, personal savings, individual money lenders), relatives/Friends, Microfinance
Institutions, and Commercial Banks. Furthermore, the study found that factors such as gender,
household size,household income, membership in cooperative institutions, land size, and asset
value positively influence agriculture credit in the study area. However,age and livestock
ownership found to havea negative influence in accessing agricultural credit. The study
recommends that farmers and cooperative stakeholders insist that farmers form the self-help
groups like cooperative institutions asthe compatible source of agricultural credit in the rural
area.
