The impact of climate change has become prevalent in various sectors, mainly agriculture, due to unpredictable weather patterns, which necessitates adaptation.

When there are heavy rains, crops are submerged with floods; while when drought sets in, crops wither and all that results in crop failure, which threatens food security.

Between January and September, this year, according to information from the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs (MIDIMAR), damages from various disasters, largely attributed to torrential rains and drought, amounted to over Rwf27 billion.

The damages included destruction of 4,611 houses and ravaging of crops on 5,388 hectares. Other damages included death of 1,882 livestock, 26 roads deteriorated, 41 bridges destroyed, destruction of 47 classrooms, among others.

In the same vein, 59,854 households were affected by drought, mainly in Eastern Province.

An assessment by the Ministry of Agriculture in Eastern Province revealed that between September 2015 and June 2016, drought affected crops on 16,119 hectares in parts of the province. The drought extended into 2017 Agriculture Season A.

According to Rwanda Meteorology Agency, sustainable agricultural practices require full use of short and medium weather forecast for achieving full production potential of given environment mainly because such inputs as irrigation, fertilisers, and pesticides are sensitive to weather information for optimum production.

How meteo agency handles issue

The Senior Forecaster at the agency, Mbati Mathieu Mugunga, said in an interview with The New Times that excessive rain or too much sunshine results from global circulation (the way air and storm systems travel over the earth’s surface).

He said the first 10 days of October had the highest rainfall in the last 30 years in the same period in the country. For instance, in Kigali, the rain was recorded at 57mm, while the average rainfall recorded during the same period over the previous years was 24.7mm.

Mugunga said the meteo agency always endeavours to inform the agriculture ministry about the amount of rain expected over a given period of time, which can help inform farming decisions.

"When they know that there will be little rain, they advise farmers not to grow certain crops because such rain cannot help. For instance, instead of growing maize, the agriculture ministry can tell farmers to grow beans which do not require a lot of water,” he said.

Mugunga said when it turns out that this arrangement is not fruitful, the Government intervenes with irrigation practices, citing the Eastern Province where an irrigation scheme has been undertaken to help farmers water their crops in case there is rain shortage.

The agency has 72 climatologic stations that measure rain and temperature, 100 automatic rain gauges as well as 144 manual rain gauges among other stations.

He said that they currently have capacity to predict rain up to within a period of three months ahead.

But, Mugunga pointed out, Rwanda has microclimate because of its relief as some areas are mountainous while others are valley-like places. This situation, he added, makes a given area, like a sector in a district, have rain while the neigbouring one has none.

Innocent Bisangwa, an environmental and climate change specialist at MINAGRI, said climate change is a reality for rural communities.

"We need just to cope with unpredictable rains, from adaptation to building people’s resilience and reducing vulnerability for smallholder farmers,” Bisangwa said.

To prevent heavy rain from flooding crops, Bisangwa said terracing to reduce water runoff, mulching to ensure that water filtrates well and gets kept into the soil to benefit agriculture are some of the approaches that the ministry is using.

As September 2016, figures from MINAGRI show, there are 103,918 radical terraces established in the country against the targeted 165,596 in 2017 and 913,212 progressive terraces against a target of 1,054,661 in 2017.

Coping with drought

Bisangwa said there was an irrigation master plan in line with adaptation measures that the ministry has devised. It includes small-scale irrigation whereby the government subsidises irrigation equipment cost, by 50 per cent, to facilitate farmers acquire the equipment. The scheme benefits agrarian land not exceeding 10 hectares in size.

Currently, 4,000 hectares of land are under small scale irrigation and by 2018 the area is expected to have reached at least 10,000 hectares, according to information from Rwanda Agriculture Board.

The acreage to benefit from small-scale irrigation in the country is estimated to be 121,000 hectares.

In total, irrigated land in the country is about 45,000 hectares, of which 30,000 hectares are in the Eastern Province; while the Government targets to irrigate 100,000 hectares of land by 2020, figures from RAB indicate.

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CLIMATE CHANGE FOR AGRICULTURE PROJECT

Climate Service for Agriculture, a project implemented by International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), with support from USAID, intends to build capacities of farmers to understand, interpret and implement weather information, according to Bisangwa.

The four-year project, Bisangwa said, started this year and will come to an end in 2019 and targets to benefit one million farmers, about 250,000 farmers per year.

"At the end of this CIAT project, we expect to be able to make weather information easily understandable to all farmers for better implementation,” Bisangwa said.

He said the metrology agency provides weather forecast information, which MINAGRI looks at as a factor of production.

"If the rain that will be available in three months’ time is 350mm, and the crop you are going to grow needs 500mm, the Ministry of Agriculture informs farmers on what should be done,” Bisangwa said.

The president of Maize Farmers Cooperatives’ Federation, Evariste Tugirinshuti, said drought affects farmers’ crops and there is need for water dams for farmers to irrigate crops.

For heavy rain that washes away farmers’ fields, there is need for anti-erosion measures and rainwater harvest techniques.

He said crop varieties with early maturity can help cope with dry seasons, noting that some farmers have grown such varieties in this season of anticipated rain shortage.

However, Tugirinshuti said there are farmers who have not yet grown crops because no rain has fallen in their areas yet, citing parts of Kirehe and Bugesera districts in Eastern Province.

"There is a need for irrigation system to see whether those farmers can grow crops,” Tugirinshuti said.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw