page_title: Economy of Tanzania
section_title: Agriculture
hierarchical_section_title: Economy of Tanzania / Agriculture
caption_attribution_description: English: Farmers clearing a rice field using their hands. This is an image of "African people at work" from Tanzania
context_page_description: Tanzania is a lower-middle income economy. Tanzania is largely dependent on agriculture for employment, accounting for about half of the employed workforce. The economy has been transitioning from a command economy to a market economy since 1985. Although total GDP has increased since these reforms began, GDP per capita dropped sharply at first, and only exceeded the pre-transition figure in around 2007.
  Following the rebasing of the economy in 2014, the GDP increased by a third to $41.33 billion.
  It has sustained relatively high economic growth compared to global trends as is characteristic of African nations, however it is worth noting that according to World Bank data the last 5 years has seen the slowest growth since 2000. The medium-term outlook is so far positive, with growth projected at 6 percent in 2020/21, which is supported by large infrastructure spending.
context_section_description: The Tanzanian economy is heavily based on agriculture, which accounts for 28.7 percent of gross domestic product, provides 85 percent of exports, and accounts for half of the employed workforce; The agricultural sector grew 4.3 percent in 2012, less than half of the Millennium Development Goal target of 10.8 percent. 16.4 percent of the land is arable, with 2.4 percent of the land planted with permanent crops.
  This strong dependence on agriculture, makes Tanzania's economy highly vulnerable to weather shocks and fluctuating commodity prices. 76% of Tanzania's population subsist thanks to agriculture and, due to the lack of knowledge and infrastructure to develop and implement some kind of agricultural technology, any droughts, floods, or temperature shocks can severely damage the living standards of those people and create huge increases in unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition rates, as well as, in really severe case, mortality rates due to starvation.
caption: Farmers clearing a rice field manually using their hands.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D7200", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.5.1 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2017-11-16T23:07:13+03:00", "Image Artist": "Michael Goima", "Image Copyright": "\u00a92016 Michael Goima", "Image ExifOffset": "290", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "16", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:06:09 14:37:56", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:06:09 14:37:56", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "995723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "13", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "13", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1080", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "720", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "83841555/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "83841555/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "36", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}