Two national budget speeches for 2026/27 tell two stories about one small, stubborn flower. The Ministry of Industry and Trade counts pyrethrum among the goods earning Tanzania hard currency in Japan. The Ministry of Agriculture, meanwhile, quietly cuts the ambition for growing it — even while piling on new interventions. A Kilimokwanza analysis.
By Kilimokwanza Correspondent | Dar es Salaam
Tucked into the trade statistics of one budget speech and given a section of its own in another, pyrethrum — pareto in Kiswahili — is one of the smallest cash crops Tanzania bothers to count. Yet the two budgets for the 2026/27 financial year, read side by side, expose a quiet contradiction at the heart of the country’s approach to the daisy-like flower whose dried heads yield one of the world’s most valuable natural insecticides.
In the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s budget, pyrethrum appears as a success: a recognised export to one of the world’s most demanding markets. In the Ministry of Agriculture’s far longer speech, it appears as a problem only half solved — a crop that missed its production target so badly that the government has responded not by doubling down, but by lowering the bar.
A buyer in Tokyo
On the trade side, the picture is encouraging. In 2025, Tanzania’s exports to Japan rose to US$110.6 million, up 10.8 per cent from US$99.82 million the year before. Among the products driving that growth, the Ministry of Industry and Trade lists pyrethrum alongside the country’s heavyweight earners — cotton, cocoa, fish, sesame and sisal fibre.
For a crop measured in the low thousands of tonnes, sharing a sentence with cotton and sisal is no small thing. It confirms what the agriculture ministry is banking on: that there is genuine, high-value international demand for Tanzanian pyrethrum, and that the bottleneck is not the market but the supply.
The target that shrank
That supply problem is laid bare in the agriculture budget. For 2025/26, the Ministry set out to lift pyrethrum production to 5,000 tonnes. By March 2026, output had reached just 2,780 tonnes — 55.6 per cent of the goal, with the season still running.
A shortfall, in itself, is unremarkable; most of Tanzania’s traditional cash crops fell short of target this year (see table). What is striking is the response. Rather than restating the 5,000-tonne ambition, the Ministry has set the 2026/27 target at 3,000 tonnes — a marginal rise on what was actually produced, but a 40 per cent cut from the goal it had just failed to meet. In effect, the country has revised its pyrethrum ambition downward to match its disappointment.
Tanzania’s traditional cash crops: 2025/26 targets vs. production to March 2026
| Crop | Target (t) | Produced (t) | % of target |
| Cashew nut | 700,000 | 617,684 | 88.2% |
| Sugar | 700,000 | 410,979 | 58.7% |
| Cotton | 400,000 | 222,014 | 55.5% |
| Tobacco | 200,000 | 185,776 | 92.9% |
| Coffee | 85,000 | 74,664 | 87.8% |
| Sisal | 80,000 | 64,322 | 80.4% |
| Tea | 40,000 | 11,631 | 29.1% |
| Cocoa | 15,000 | 10,096 | 67.3% |
| Pyrethrum | 5,000 | 2,780 | 55.6% |
| TOTAL (all cash crops) | 2,225,000 | 1,599,946 | 71.9% |
Source: Ministry of Agriculture budget speech, 2026/27 (Jedwali Na. 5). Figures marked as production-in-progress at time of reporting.
More effort, lower ambition
The paradox sharpens when set against everything the Ministry says it is doing for the crop. Far from neglecting pyrethrum, the 2026/27 plan layers on intervention after intervention, channelled through the Cereals and Other Produce Regulatory Authority (COPRA) and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI).
- Farmer training: 450 lead farmers and 50 inspectors are to be trained through 100 farmer field schools in 2026/27, up sharply from the 74 lead farmers and 74 field schools reported the previous year.
- Seed supply: COPRA and TARI plan to produce and distribute five tonnes of improved pyrethrum seed, after nine tonnes were distributed across Mbeya, Songwe, Njombe, Iringa and Arusha in 2025/26.
- Drying infrastructure: Construction continues on 150 flower-drying facilities spread across six councils — Makete (30), Ileje (35), Mbeya Rural (40), Ludewa (10), Mbulu (25) and Arusha Rural (10) — a programme that had reached only about 20 per cent completion.
- Farmer registration: COPRA intends to register 20,000 pyrethrum growers, capturing their details and the GPS coordinates of their farms to formalise the value chain and target services.
Keeping the value at home
Running through the plan is a clear industrial logic: stop exporting the crop in its rawest form. The Ministry has introduced contract farming specifically to halt the shipment of pyrethrum powder (unga wa pareto) out of the country, arguing that processing should happen domestically to capture value and protect local industry. Alongside this, it says it will keep courting private investors to add value to the crop and lift exports.
It is a coherent ambition — grow more, dry it locally, process it at home, sell the finished product to buyers like Japan. But it sits awkwardly beside a headline target that is heading in the opposite direction. If the strategy is to industrialise pyrethrum and chase export markets, a national production goal of just 3,000 tonnes looks less like a launch pad than a ceiling.
The question the budgets leave open
Read together, the two speeches frame a question neither answers directly. Why, when Japan is buying, when COPRA is registering farmers, building dryers and banning raw-powder exports, and when TARI is multiplying seed, is the official production target being cut rather than raised?
The most charitable reading is realism: setting a target the sector can actually hit, then building the foundations — seed, skills, drying capacity, a registered farmer base — for faster growth later. The less charitable reading is that pyrethrum remains an afterthought, kept alive by donor-style interventions while the real ambition quietly drains away.
Either way, the gap between the two budgets is itself the story. One ministry treats pyrethrum as proof that Tanzanian farms can earn foreign exchange from a niche, high-value crop. The other treats it as a target to be managed downward. For the growers in Mbulu, Makete, Ileje and Ludewa now being registered, mapped and trained, the resolution of that contradiction will decide whether the flower they harvest is the beginning of an industry — or simply a line item that survives another year.
Reporting drawn from the Government of Tanzania budget speeches for the 2026/27 financial year: the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Agriculture. All production and trade figures are as stated in those documents.
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