This paper explores tensions over scale and viability in irrigated agricultural development in Tanzania. A
revival of ambition to transform African agriculture has reawakened debate over what type of agriculture
can best deliver increased production and poverty reduction for rural populations. This paper examines
these debates through the lens of an ethnographic study of an irrigated rice farm in Tanzania. With a
chequered history of state and donor intervention management, Dakawa, Rice Farm in Mvomero District is
now collectively farmed by a co-operative society of ‘small farmers’. It is widely hailed as a success, both
of irrigation production, and of ‘small farmers’ in delivering this However, such narratives of smallness
and success obscure a more complex reality in which smallness of scale may be more of a discursive tool
than a reflection of empirical reality.. Although notions of ‘viability’ and ‘success’ in such development
interventions are themselves also contested and depend on perspective, there is evidence that there are
fundamental problems of both short and long term viability.