The Timber Rush Project participated in this years’ (2018) Nane Nane agricultural show held at the Mwalimu Nyerere Exhibition Grounds in Morogoro Municipality from 1st to 10th August 2018
The Project show cased its activities through the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) pavilion. Additionally, the project’s preliminary results were disseminated to the public through a banner and flyers whereas the later were distributed to the audience.
The preliminary findings communicated by the project are:
- More land has been converted into tree planting at village and household levels
- Increased competition for land between food production and tree planting
- Women are mostly involved in the production node of the value chain
- Men are more involved at harvesting, processing and market nodes
- Micro-scale industries are emerging for timber processing
- Mobile saw mills or ‘ding dongs’ have facilitated processing of timber in close proximity to the farms contributing to the rush for tree planting
- Growing rural-urban interaction as private forestry has become a significant supplier of timber to urban areas
- Fire hazards is the critical challenge in the private forestry investment
- Traditional ways of land allocation are affected by market forces resulting in land- based conflicts amongst local people
- Extension services in private forestry investment are inadequate
- Lack of standards and thus price differentiation contributes to increased harvesting of immature trees
- The profit obtained from timber trading has motivated the villagers to turn most of the land to tree planting, threatening food security
Dr. Suzana Samson sharing some preliminary findings from Timber Rush Project during this year's Nane Nane Exhibitions in Morogoro (August 2018)