African Journal of Agricultural Research 2019; Vol. 14(7):395-405
Despite the truth that the agricultural land use planning exercises have so far covered small and
fragmented part of the African continent, the involvement of farmers who are among the direct
beneficiaries of the outputs have been limited. This work demonstrates the contributions of farmers on
the land use planning process for rice production in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. Analytic hierarchic
process (AHP) was used to assign scores of comparative importance of attributes for a suitable land for
rice production. Scoring was done by three groups: farmers, extension staff, and joint group
comprising both farmers and extension staff. Joint group scores were considered more refined as they
were generated by discussions and consensus between the two groups. Results showed that the three
groups sequentially ranked the attributes the same. However, the attributes actual scores were
different. The farmers’ scores were consistently close to the joint group’s scores compared to the
extension staff group. The closeness suggests superiority and consistence of farmers’ perceptions of
importance of the identified attributes used for this land use planning exercise. Thus, this study
recommends more involvement of farmers in agricultural land use planning process for better and
sustainable land use planning outputs.