Multi-model approach for assessing sunflower food value chain in Tanzania

Abstract

Sunflower is one of the major oilseeds produced in Tanzania, but due to insufficient domestic production more than half of the country's demand is imported. The improvement of sunflower food value chain (FVC) is important to ensure an increase on production, availability and quality of edible oil in Tanzania. Therefore, a conceptual framework can allow the combined use of different models to provide insights about the sunflower FVC. This research focuses on identifying the European models participating in the MACSUR project that can provide a better understanding of the sunflower FVC in Tanzania, especially within a context of food security improvement. A FVC scheme for Tanzania was designed with the main steps of sunflower production. Thereafter, the models used in two MACSUR themes (CropM and TradeM) were selected and placed along each step of the FVC. As result, the sunflower FVC in Tanzania was organized in five steps, namely natural resources (1), production (2), processing (3), trade (4) and consumption (5). The step 1 uses environmental indicators to analyse soil parameters (calculated using LPJmL), and part of the outputs will provide data for the step 2 of the FVC. In the production step, data from step 1, together with other inputs, will be used to run crop models (as HERMES, MONICA and APSIM) to analyse the impact on sunflower yield. Thereafter, outputs from step 2 can be used as input for socio-economic models (as MODAM or MagPIE) to estimate production costs and profit (step 3) and also to determine the market opportunity for the sunflower oil and the by-products (trade and consumption). Due to the large range of models, it is possible to assess significant part of the FVC, reducing the necessity of assumptions and improving the understanding of the FVC.