About 37.6% of people in rural Tanzania are poor and 28.2% are food Poverty is 9.7%. Economic growth has not translated into a notable reduction of poverty. The major issue is how to accelerate economic growth in rural areas, where agriculture remains the major source of livelihood. Purposefully, the current study selects to analyse crop chain and livelihoods in one pure cash-crop and one mixed crop; tobacco and paddy, respectively. The study argues that interventions in agriculture have concentrated on the up-stream levels of value chains; but critical gaps are downstream, involving marketing, reinvestment in agriculture and household expenditure patterns of the income earned. The study finds that hardware aspects (inputs, land, farming mechanics) are important but need to include agro-technoware (e.g. labour/time saving technologies), improved agro-human ware (education, modern agro-skills, credit and business skills) and organo-ware (functional cooperatives, networks, etc.). Multiple interventions for the entire crop value-addition chain should be applied.