Farmers affected by different weather disasters are appealing for scaling up of agricultural insurance schemes as well as interventions by the disaster management fund to help them recover from losses.

The concern was raised during a  recent agricultural summit held alongside East African Legislative Assembly session in Kenya last week.

Farmers’ representatives and civil societies called on member states of East African Community to lobby for the setting up of reliable agricultural finance so as to solve woes suffered by farmers due to disasters.

Business Times caught up with Esperance Nyirahabiyambere, a woman farmer from Rwanda’s Karongi District in Gitesi sector who was expressing farmers’ challenges on behalf of Rwandan smallholder farmers. She is the president of Tuzamure Agaseke Cooperative growing maize and beans with 32 members most of whom are women.

The cooperative started in 2007 by weaving baskets and later embraced farming to enhance income generation.

Farmers like her and civil societies stated that there is need of mechanisms to provide insurance to smallholder farmers to reduce losses during disasters which are increasingly becoming common.

For instance, the recent flooding and landslides in Karongi affected half of the cooperative’s three hectares of maize crops.

"In February this year, a big part of three hectares of maize was severely affected by flooding and thunderstorm with strong hail stones damaging the leaves. We might count losses over one tonne of produce because we will not harvest anything,” she said.

The affected crops are part of crops worth Rwf4 billion  across the country that were destroyed by rain induced disasters since January across the country, according to figures from the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs.

From January to May 10, 2018 there have been over 4,973.5 hectares of crops damaged by heavy rain, figures show.

Nyirahabiyambere said that the cooperative had used over 300 kilogrammes of fertilizers with one Kilogramme costing Rwf450 but all this was counted as loss after the soil erosion.

She said that if farmers had insurance subscription, they could not incur such losses, adding there is need for increased awareness among smallholder and rural farmers about how the agriculture insurance scheme works.

In July 2017 the Ministry of Agriculture announced that  subsidized agriculture insurance scheme was allocated Rwf200 million under 2017/2018 fiscal year to help farmers avoid losses due to different disasters such as floods, drought and pests and diseases.

"I am not aware of how agricultural insurance scheme works. We need that when we get loans from banks, we can also be enlightened about agriculture insurance so that we reduce any risk that might arise,” she said.

Although the cooperative has not yet updated their financial books for their harvest, she said, the season’s produce is expected to decrease due to flooding.

Sustaining cooperative’ achievements

She explained that building resilience to disasters is a good move to sustain achievements that the cooperative has made so far since 2007.

"We started as women who are single mothers, Genocide survivors who are widows and vulnerable women weaving baskets. One basket could cost between Rwf2,500 and Rwf5,000 and 10 per cent of it could be saved. We spent the savings to invest in farming because weaving was not bearing fruit for us. In 2009 we started farming on three acres of land that we lease and currently we are tilling about three hectares that we lease with income we generate from agriculture,” she said.

The cooperative has so far installed Rwf10 million machinery that processes the harvest into maize flour.

"The equipment has capacity to process two tonnes per day, but we are processing less than one tonne of maize because we do not have enough clients as we only supply to few schools,” she said.

She added that to sustain the achievements, there is need for agricultural insurance services and financing from banks.

Some of the resolutions from the recent agricultural summit called for paying attention to commitments adopted by African Union on building resilience to climate vulnerability.

The summit also called for increased resource allocation to disaster preparedness, having policies and strategies as well as early warning response systems.

Insurance to smallholder farmers, especially women and youth in agriculture, was unanimously agreed upon.

Enhancing resilience to climate variability is one of the seven commitments undertaken by African union Heads of State and Governments under Malabo FrameWork  in 2014 so as ensure agricultural productivity is increased in Africa.

The commitments include allocation of at least 10 per cent of public expenditure to agriculture sector, and boosting intra-African trade in agriculture commodities.

However, an assessment report by AU that was presented during the summit showed that in terms of implementing the commitments, some EAC countries are not on track in enhancing resilience to climate variability, enhancing investment finance in agriculture, ending hunger by 2025.

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