What came first: the chicken or the egg?

How soybean and maize value chains are driving the development of chicken value chains in the Iringa region of Tanzania

In May, I visited the Iringa region in the southern highlands of Tanzania for a stakeholder workshop and field visit. The workshop and field visit focused on understanding the relations between soybean, maize and chicken value chains in the Iringa region. You may wonder why these specific value chains; what’s the point of looking at all three? In this blog I would like to show you the value of looking at interrelated value chains so that you can improve the impact of your work in single value chains.

Our focus on the soybean, maize and chicken value chains started from the N2Africa project which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This ‘research-in-development’ project aimed to put nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers growing legume crops in 11 African countries including Tanzania. In Tanzania, soybean was one of the main legume crops promoted, which was grown in rotation with maize to improve soil fertility through nitrogen fixation.

The soybean, maize and chicken value chains have linkages at several stages. Soybean and maize are important sources of chicken feed. They are often grown in rotation on farms, where the soybean fix nitrogen and improve soil fertility, which improves the next maize harvest. Growing maize after soybean rather than maize after maize also reduces the risk of diseases and pests like the fall armyworm. Agro-dealers sell inputs for maize and soybean to farmers, and sometimes also for chicken production. There are specialized traders who only buy one commodity, but many also buy and sell different commodities like maize, soybean and chicken. The same holds for processing companies. One processing company we visited specialized in milling maize for flour and selling the by-product (maize bran) to livestock farmers, while another large-scale farmer purchased feed ingredients from different sources to produce its own chicken feed in addition to chickens, sunflower oil and pigs.

When you zoom in on related value chains, you will find many such linkages. Some of these linkages are stronger and create stronger dependencies than others. The maize value chain, for example, can easily survive without the soybean value chain. Maize is an important staple crop in Tanzania and many of its neighboring countries, so there is always a steady demand for maize. The soybean value chain, on the other hand, strongly depends on the chicken value chain because soybean for human consumption is not common in Tanzania. The chicken value chain, in turn, mainly depends on the maize value chain for its energy and partly on the soybean value chain for its protein, but substitutes such as sunflower cake and fishmeal are available in case soybean meal is not available or when prices are high.

In our stakeholder workshop, we found that these dependencies between the three value chains currently create risks. When for example the quality of the soybean is not right for processing into chicken feed, processors will turn to imported soybean or substitute inputs. Similarly, a bad soy and maize harvest due to drought for example would challenge chicken farmers to find sufficient feed for their chicken. One challenge that was mentioned by virtually all stakeholders is the lack of access to cheap credit. Many of the farmers in the workshop reported interest rates of 15-20% on loans. Such a lack of access to credit holds back many of the entrepreneurs in all three value chains.

Fortunately, dependencies between value chains don’t have to be bad news. In fact, positive developments in one value chain can have a positive impact on other value chains as well (read my other blog on SDG synergies ). Improved productivity of soybean and maize will benefit the chicken value chain, just like a booming chicken value chain will benefit soybean and maize. For example, increased investments of NGOs in chicken value chains may (when implemented well) not only benefit the chicken value chain but also increase the demand for maize and especially soybean, which in turn offers a stimulus to these value chains. Likewise, improved techniques to extract soybean oil from the soybean could have positive impacts on the soybean value chain (also oil and soybean flour for human consumption) and on the chicken value chain. Current techniques leave too much oil in the bean, which means less oil revenues and poor quality feeds for chicken.

In our project in Tanzania, we will take a further look at the quality of chicken feeds and feed ingredients in Iringa region. In our discussions with farmers, we have heard contrasting perspectives on which feed types and strategies are better. Chicken farmers have different feeding strategies ranging from scavenging, home-made rations, commercial feeds, and a combination of the home-made rations and commercial feeds. A better understanding of feed quality from different inputs and processing techniques will help to improve chicken productivity and give a boost to the soybean value chain. In turn, such an impetus to the soybean value chain can benefit nitrogen fixation on farms and thus benefit the maize value chain as well.