Tanzania now eyes organic food market

Arusha. The Tanzania horticultural industry plans a major foray into the biological control to spur the domestic applications, as it seeks a lion’s share of the $370 billion worth of annual global organic food market value.

The organic food industry is a booming business, with ReportLinker projecting the annual global market value to surge to $368.94 billion by 2026, up from $167.85 billion in 2020.

The champion of horticulture in the country, the Tanzania Horticultural Association (Taha), is currently working to support a Tanzania’s pioneer manufacturer of biological control agents, Multi-Flowers Ltd, to spur large-scale production to meet the local and export market needs.

“We are very grateful to the Multi-Flowers Ltd for its breakthrough, becoming the pioneer company to spearhead the manufacture of bio-control agents in Tanzania. Our role now is to stimulate use of this environmentally-safe pest management method in order to get the lion’s share of the nearly $370 billion annual global organic food market,” said the Taha Group CEO, Ms Jacqueline Mkindi.

The global organic food market is mainly driven by increasing health concerns among people due to the growing number of chemical poisoning cases, awareness about the harmful effects of pesticide residues in food and its impact on health.

The Tanzania company behind the breakthrough, the Arusha-based Multi-Flower Limited, said it can produce 1,200 litres of bio-control agents a day or 6000 litres a week, giving a ray of hope to horticultural farmers and exporters to take advantage of the global organic food value chain.

The Multi-Flower Ltd MD, Mr Tjerk Scheltema, said the bio-control agents are currently only supplied to local flower farms and the surplus is exported to Holland - thus flying the Tanzania’s profile high in the innovation stakes.

The biological control agents include Predator mites such as Phytoseiulus persimillis, Amblyseius swirkii, Amblyseius montdorensis, Neoseilus californicus and Stratiolaelaps scimitus.

The biological control application in agriculture proves to be beneficial to the environment and human health, as it does not cause toxicity to plants, soil or water.

Also, it multiplies easily in the soil, leaving no residual problems.

The bio-control agents not only control the disease, but also enhance root and plant growth by way of encouraging the beneficial soil microflora, and increasing the crops yield.

“I’m humbled to enable Tanzania for the first time to export biological control agents to international markets,” Mr Scheltema explained.

He, however, said that the success story wouldn’t be possible without the painstaking efforts by Taha and the Ministry of Agriculture to streamline the policies, regulations and procedures to facilitate the production, registration and export of these natural enemies of pests that cause economic losses in horticulture industry.

Indeed, in Tanzania, it was very difficult to import and export the biocontrol agents as the registration procedures under the Plant Protection Regulations, 1998 were silent on the process of its registration and exportation.

The tight and silent regulations made it challenging for the horticulture companies to produce, register, import or export the plant protection substances even though these companies have the requisite capacity, skills and technology to do so.

It is understood, Taha in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture in their efforts to strengthen the pest control unit in Tanzania, had organized strategic discussions to tap the potential of producing these important agents for local and international demand.

Through the Technical Expertise from the Biological Control Agents Sub-committee (BCAS), Plant Health Services and Parliamentary Committee Members in charge of Agriculture, Livestock and Water pushed for a need to revise the Plant Health Regulation, 1998 and come up with an up-to-date regulation that incorporates modern technologies.

These engagements facilitated the establishment of the system that would enhance ease production, registration and exportation of biological control agents under the Plant Protection Act, 2020 and Guidelines for the export, shipment, import and release of biological control agents and other beneficial organisms – IPPC

“All these efforts have started paying dividends as they have encouraged the multiflowers Ltd to produce and export the biocontrol agents for the first time in history,” said Taha’s business enabling envorinment manager, Mr Kelvin Remen.