Gender Dilemma of Small-Scale Farmers in Improving Household Income through an Agro Enterprise Development: A Case of Tea Growing Farm Households in Uganda

The agricultural sector is the most dominant in Uganda’s economy. It’s a main avenue the government uses to improve household food, nutrition and income security. Tea is one of the main cash crops and export commodities after coffee and fish. Tea was promoted both in traditional and emerging districts as a commodity, which smallholder farmers could use to improve household income. The study was carried out to assess: 1) farmers’ capacity building in tea production; 2) tea leaf yields in wet and dry seasons on farm; 3) farmers’ strategies in marketing tea leaves; and 4) factors that led to changes in green tea yields over time. It was revealed that there was high disproportion capacity building of male and female headed households. This was highly due to gender issues and concerns, which could not favor female headed households. There was low productivity of tea bushes due to limited use of improved agricultural innovations related to soil fertility improvement and conservation. Low productivity of tea bushes was a disincentive to household poverty alleviation and undermined government’s efforts of alleviating household poverty.