Our Organic Farms in Mkuranga District, Tanzania

Why We Farm in Mkuranga District

Mkuranga District sits in Tanzania's Coastal Region, a short drive from Dar es Salaam and Julius Nyerere International Airport. The district's soils have not been worked over by decades of heavy industrial farming, which gives us a genuinely clean starting point for organic cultivation rather than land that first needs years of remediation. Coastal rainfall and humidity support growing through most of the year, and proximity to the city means produce can move from field to packhouse to airport in a matter of hours, not days.

This location is also practical on the business side of farming organically. Being close to Dar es Salaam keeps logistics and input costs manageable, while still being far enough from heavy urban and industrial activity to protect soil and water quality. That balance of clean land and workable logistics is the main reason we have kept expanding in this district since 2014 rather than scattering production further afield.

Greenhouses and Open Fields, Working Together

TanzPro Greens runs two growing systems side by side rather than relying on one method for everything. Greenhouses give us control over temperature, humidity, and pest pressure, which is why we use them for crops that are more sensitive or need tighter conditions, particularly cherry tomatoes and bell peppers. Open fields, by contrast, give us the scale needed for higher-volume vegetables, fruit, and aromatics.

Running both systems together means we are not dependent on a single method or a single season, and we can match the right crop to the right growing environment instead of forcing one approach across everything on the farm.

• Greenhouse crops: cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, chillies and habanero
• Open-field vegetables: tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, green beans, sweetcorn
• Open-field fruit: avocado (Hass and local varieties), pineapple, passion fruit
• Field-grown aromatics: ginger, garlic and fresh culinary herbs

Two Sister Projects: Mitaranda and Kisele

The Mitaranda Organic Project started in 2016 as our first serious step into greenhouse and open-field organic farming, launched with a group of six women farmers. It proved that organic methods could work at a commercial scale in this part of Tanzania, and it set the training model we still use across our farms today.

The Kisele Organic Project followed in 2018, sited along Mtwara Road, where we expanded greenhouse capacity threefold. Kisele is where our organic vision truly took shape: it pushed us from a single farm into a network of contracted growers, and it remains a core part of our production base alongside Mitaranda. You can read more about its history on the Kisele Organic Project page.

Women-Led Farming and Training

TanzPro Greens contracts more than 50 farmers across our growing areas, and around 70% of that workforce is made up of rural women. Many joined through Mitaranda's original six-farmer group or through the contract-farming expansion that followed our 2021 Passion Fruit Drive, which brought over 20 additional smallholders into the programme.

Each contracted farmer is trained in organic cultivation methods, supplied with certified seeds, and given a guaranteed market for whatever they harvest. That guarantee matters as much as the training itself. It is what allows farmers to commit fully to organic practices instead of hedging with conventional methods on the side, and it is the foundation of how we scale production without diluting our standards.

Water and Irrigation

Our farms use a mix of drip irrigation and rain-fed water systems, chosen crop by crop rather than applied uniformly across every plot. Drip irrigation is used where precision matters most, feeding water directly to the root zone in greenhouses and select open-field plots, which reduces waste and helps manage disease pressure in Tanzania's humid coastal climate. Rain-fed fields carry a large share of the remaining production, timed around the district's seasonal rainfall.

This combination keeps water use practical without depending on heavy irrigation infrastructure, in line with the low-input, sustainable approach we apply across the whole farm base.

From Farm to Export

Everything on this farm base feeds directly into TanzPro Greens' export operation. Produce is hand-harvested, sorted, and graded within hours of picking, then pre-cooled at the packhouse before being packed into food-grade export cartons. From there it moves by air through Julius Nyerere International Airport or by sea, depending on the market and the product.

Because Mkuranga sits close to Dar es Salaam, produce harvested at sunrise can reach kitchens in Seychelles or the Gulf within 24 to 48 hours. That short distance between farm and airport is one of the practical reasons this district works so well as our production base, supporting steady supply to Seychelles, Dubai, Oman, Russia, and East African markets alike.

None of this works without the farm base itself staying consistent season after season, which is why the choices covered on this page, location, growing method, project structure, and the people doing the work, are treated as one connected system rather than separate decisions.