**2.7 Conclusions and policy implications**

Agro-pastoral households in the semi-arid areas of central and northern Tanzania have lived with the vagaries of weather, coping and adapting through an array of diversified crop and livestock portfolios. In the face of a changing climate, along with other production and market risks, current and potential crop and livestock portfolios must be empirically illuminated in order to test their underlying efficacy in ensuring acceptable returns and associated risks. Shedding light on the levels of returns and associated risks is critical in informing the future design of crop-livestock portfolios that enhance the livelihood resilience of agro-pastoral households in semi-arid areas of Tanzania.

The majority of agro-pastoralists are diversifying within and integratively across crop and animal farming activities. Some crops and livestock species, such as maize, cattle and sheep, are sensitive to climatic related production risks, but are widely raised. Apart from long-term breeding and genotype improvement programs to develop varieties and breeds that are drought resistant, the strategic reorientation of crop and livestock portfolios appears to be an affordable and tailored solution. For instance, goats and chickens that can thrive under critical drought conditions should be promoted in order to create portfolios that generate acceptable returns while minimizing risk.

Crop and livestock productivity in the semi-arid areas of central and northern Tanzania are generally low compared the national averages. Factors that contribute to such lower productivity among others include dependence on weather-dependent rainfed agriculture and lack of rainwater harvesting infrastructure. However, semi-arid Tanzania is home to a majority of the poor, with destitute cropping and herding families, thus making them poverty hotspots where poverty reduction efforts should be strategically targeted. Our analyses suggest an array of crop and livestock portfolios that can be promoted in order to generate economic returns within certain bounds of risks.

This study investigates the levels of economic returns and associate risks for the current and potential crop and livestock portfolios. In order to highlight the centrality of strategic choices of economic portfolios among agro-pastoralists for enhanced livelihood resilience, it is important to incorporate off-farm activities into the portfolio diversification analysis. However, this is left as an empirical niche for further studies.
