A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award
of the Master of Business Administration in Corporate Management
(MBA-CM) of Mzumbe University
The motive of the study was to assess factors affecting the competition among
smallholder farmers in commercial poultry meat. The specific objectives were
analyzing how shortfall in knowledge and training affect the competition among
smallholder farmers in commercial poultry meat, assessing how the competition is
being impacted by lack of capital and investigating how market information affect
the competition. The study adopted a case study design and the sample size of 100
farmers were adequate selected randomly as they were broilers farmers. Primary data
were gathered using questionnaire and interview and secondary data were gathered
using documentary review. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics
and interpretative approaches. The study found that it’s quite difficult for small scale
farmer with insufficient knowledge and improper agriculture training practice to
penetrate in a new market and compete, insufficient knowledge and improper
agriculture training practice leads to poor production of chick, hence failing to meet
target market demands. The study also found lack of capital for Investment halt the
potential growth of small scale farmers. But these variable are not in the equation of
a farmer due to capital constrain and the result is a stagnation of farmers chances of
becoming competitive, Lastly the study realized the power of information and it
potential to farmers, information give farmers details of a new market that his
competitor may be have not realize it also it inform the farmer about new practice
that will lower his production cost. The study recommends that strategies has to be
made to address issues related with lack of capital, lack of information about the
market and lack of training and skills of small farmers in poultry farming in order to
improve small poultry farmers compete effective with large scale producers in the
market.