Assessing farmer’s perception of conservation status of agrobiodiversity in selected agroecological zones of Tanzania

Abstract

Agrobiodiversity serves as the foundation for resilient agricultural systems, sustainable food availability and nutritional diversity, and ecologically sound livelihoods of the community. Ecological services provided by rich agrobiodiversity ensure that people earn their livelihood and the sustainability of the coming generations is certain. Understanding how communities depend on agrobiodiversity may be well captured on the merit of agroecological landscapes because they entail how each species accrues to the agroecosystem thus enabling accurate judgment on the importance of such agrobiodiversity from the collective view of farmers, ecologists and agricultural scientists. The participatory four-cell assessment was employed in gender disaggregated focus group discussions (FGD) conducted in three contrasting agroecological zones of Tanzania to assess the status of agrobiodiversity conservation and utilisation in rural farming communities. Diversity indices were calculated to determine relative species richness and abundances across AEZ, Species Threat Index was calculated using modified IUCN formula to determine the influence of each farming systems, topography and gender roles on collective farmer’s perception of conservation and use of agrobiodiversity, t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to infer the observed index score. The results show that species abundance and distribution were lowest in semi-arid agroecology and highest in the coastal zone despite showing highest similarity in species composition. Generally, farmers perceived the status of agrobiodiversity as fairy secure with species threat index ranging from 0.39 to 0.59, mean = 0.48 (s.d =0.06). Interesting pattern of variations in perception was observed across AEZ, along topographies and between genders despite statistical insignificances. Nevertheless, these findings emphasize the importance of understanding the human-environment interaction that determine sustainability of agrobiodiversities. This paper serves as base information on the quest to understand underlying factors determining farmers’ constant need to decide on the utilisation and conservation of agrobiodiversity.