A steep fall in Tanzania’s pigeon pea prices is being driven by a global glut and an extended duty-free import window in India, the world’s largest consumer of the crop, according to the Tanzania Mercantile Exchange (TMX). Farm incomes are being squeezed as international benchmarks that hovered near $1.60 per kilo last year have slid to $0.60–$0.75, eroding margins for growers who collectively produce roughly 400,000 tonnes a year and positioning Tanzania, ordinarily the world’s second-largest producer, on the wrong side of international market forces.
TMX chief executive Godfrey Malekano said supply has outrun demand and that India’s policy choice, meant to ease domestic shortages, has widened the flow of East African and Canadian shipments into the market, depressing prices across the board. “Global supply has outpaced demand, and this has inevitably dragged prices down,” he told Daily News, adding that India remains a reliable lifeline for Tanzanian exporters even as valuations weaken. Malekano warned that without coordinated marketing, adequate storage, and deliberate domestic demand creation, growers will continue to absorb the shocks of global volatility rather than share them across the value chain.
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At farm level, the arithmetic is unforgiving. Local market prices of about 2,000/- per kilo appear superficially stronger than dollar-denominated export offers, but cost build-ups quickly erode any advantage. Farmers in Bariadi (Simiyu) may sell around 1,000/- per kilo at the gate; after collection fees and levies, 202/- plus a 3% cess, the cost can reach 1,250/- per kilo before the crop even leaves warehouses some 943km away from Dar es Salaam via Dodoma. By the time handling, finance, and port charges are layered on, Tanzanian cargoes struggle to compete with cheaper supplies, particularly from Mozambique, which industry sources say are currently landing into India near 500/- per kilo. Prices in Mtwara hover around 800/- per kilo, while other regions fetch 1,000/- and above, according to recent TMX auction prints, numbers that illustrate how geography, logistics, and policy costs shape competitiveness as much as agronomy.
Structural reliance on a single external buyer magnifies the shock. Unlike beans or groundnuts, which enjoy deeper local consumption and more resilient domestic pricing, pigeon peas are cultivated primarily for export. That concentration risk is on full display as New Delhi’s duty-free window, now extended through March 2026, continues to pull in ample volumes from East Africa and beyond. The result is a classic price cycle: harvest-time surges collide with open-door import policy in the anchor market, inventories swell, and offers soften across origin countries. Tanzanian exporters report that even as TMX quotes adjust downward to track global levels and deter arbitrage at farmers’ expense, Indian bids are often lower still, forcing difficult decisions on whether to sell at a loss, hold in the hope of a rebound, or walk away from the market.
Industry voices say the pressure is not solely imported. Zirack Andrew, executive director of the Tanzania Pulses Network (TPN), argues that a stack of domestic frictions, from auction rules to export levies and transport, keeps Tanzanian cargoes expensive by the time they reach Indian ports. The cumulative burden crimps volumes and pushes buyers toward cheaper origin markets such as Mozambique and Malawi. In this environment, even modest cost differences become decisive as traders arbitrage shillings, dollars, and rupees across borders and seasons.
TMX says a practical first line of defense is being prepared: dedicated storage capacity that allows warehousing during global surpluses and timed releases when demand strengthens. In effect, storage becomes the bridge between harvest-time distress sales and value-seeking marketing windows. Properly designed, a warehouse program can underpin warehouse receipt financing, letting farmers borrow against inventory rather than dumping at the trough of the price cycle; it can also support quality segregation so that premium lots command premium bids. Malekano said the exchange is gradually aligning posted prices with global benchmarks to reduce opportunities for middlemen to extract rents from information gaps, while still protecting producers’ ability to achieve fair value.
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The near-term outlook remains heavy. Production prospects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique are described as “healthy,” implying that supply will likely stay ample into the next marketing year unless weather shocks or policy reversals intervene. With India’s duty-free regime still in place, the international market will retain a wide funnel for imports, and any rebound in price will depend on consumption outpacing that pipeline. In practice, that means Tanzanian farmers face at least one more season of thin margins unless either costs are trimmed at home or a new source of demand is cultivated.
Policy and market experts sketch a menu of actions that could move the dial. On the cost side, streamlining fees and levies along the corridor to Dar es Salaam and Mtwara, improving first- and last-mile logistics, and speeding port and border clearances would narrow the delivered-into-India gap that currently favors competitors. On the market side, pragmatic diversification, targeting other South Asian and Gulf buyers, and building intra-African trade under the AfCFTA, could reduce concentration risk.
On the demand side, fostering local processing (dal milling, flours, fortified foods) and embedding pulses into institutional purchase programs (school feeding, hospitals, prisons, humanitarian pipelines) would give growers an alternative to export-only price cycles. On the finance and risk front, scaling warehouse receipts, factoring, and crop-indexed insurance could stabilize cash flow, while better market intelligence, timely dissemination of Indian policy moves and auction signals, would help farmers and traders make informed selling decisions.
Pigeon pea is a climate-smart legume: drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing, and beneficial for soil structure and rotation systems. Persistently depressed prices can trigger acreage shifts to less resilient crops, undermining soil health and climate adaptation gains in semi-arid zones. A fairer, more predictable market architecture, one that shares risk among farmers, traders, and policymakers, would protect both livelihoods and landscapes. That architecture will hinge on actionable coordination among TMX, local governments, transporters, financiers, and processors, not merely on exhortations to “add value.”
Tanzania’s position as a major producer remains an asset, but in an oversupplied world the difference between resilience and relapse will be execution: trimming avoidable costs, storing when the curve is against sellers, selling when the window opens, and steadily building alternative demand so that one policy decision in one foreign capital no longer dictates incomes across entire districts. Until then, the country’s pigeon pea belt will continue to navigate an unforgiving math problem, one that can be solved, but not wished away.
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