Agricultural marketing and peasant‐state transfers in Tanzania

The paper examines the way in which the agricultural marketing system acted as a mechanism for transferring resources out of the rural economy in Tanzania over the period 1970 to 1980. Trends in the relationship between producer prices and sales prices of marketed crops are analysed to generate an estimate of gross resource transfers from peasants to the state. The analysis also identifies the major forces, both internal and external to state marketing institutions, which resulted in a deterioration in the economic efficiency of agricultural marketing and a concomitant steep decline in real returns to marketed agricultural production.