Most farmers in Tanzania implement risk reduction strategies of storing maize in local facilities and sell the grain soon after storage. The approach buffers against crop price fluctuation and market instability. This study aims at understanding the integration of hermetic bags technology to local storage facilities at smallholder farmers’ context and its contribution to maize crop net revenue. The Agronomic Survey (APS) data of 2016/ 2017 cropping season and storage experiment data among maize farmers in Southern and Northern highlands of Tanzania were used. A cross sectional APS data on the maize farmers and farms’ characteristics were collected from 560 households. The storage experiment was conducted randomly on 147 households grouped into two groups; Local storage only (LSO) and Local storage and PICS (LSP) within APS selected households. Multiple linear regression results revealed that, maize grain yield, seed costs, storage facility and Songwe region influenced the maize net revenue. Furthermore, there was dissimilarity in mean maize grain net revenue between Local Storage Only and Local Storage and PICS contrary to the null hypothesis, using student t test. The results suggest that farmers’ maize net revenue is a function of storage facilities, gender, maize yield, seed costs and geographic characteristics.
Keywords: Storage facilities, net revenue, maize smallholders, southern and Northern highlands of Tanzania