Rwanda has made significant progress over the past two decades in increasing agricultural production, improving nutrition, and reducing poverty, driven mainly by a subsistence farming approach. Yet, as data suggests, production has not kept up with our growing population, and some among us still lack access to sufficient, nutritious food. Our next farming phase requires us to change tack by embracing a market-oriented food system, which our government also advocates for. As experiences in other parts of the world show, agricultural commercialization often initiates a virtuous cycle that raises income levels, attains food security goals, encourages healthy consumption, and sustains rural development. The strides we’ve made in farming so far are easy to see. Since 2007, farm production has doubled, and the poverty rate has decreased from 57 to 39 percent. In 2018, we began implementing the Rwanda Stunting Prevention and Reduction Project to address chronic malnutrition. As a result, there has been a significant uptake of health and nutrition services administered through community-based delivery platforms. As well, through simple practices like planting and harvesting in time, drying cereals properly, and improved post-harvest handling, we’ve significantly reduced post-harvest losses. Over the last decade and a half, the government has shifted focus from subsistence-based production to market-oriented farming. Working with various partners, commercialization projects have taken off that emphasize intensifying production systems, promoting farmer cooperatives, and enhancing access to markets. I believe that this frontier holds one of the biggest opportunities for transforming agriculture. One Acre Fund-TUBURA, the agricultural organization I work for, dedicates a big part of its work to commercializing smallholder agriculture. While we’ve mainly supported farmers to access planting inputs such as fertilizer and seeds on credit since we launched in 2007, we’ve recently expanded our scope to support high-value crop production that achieves nutrition, diversification, and revenue opportunities to diversify farmer income streams. Over the next decade, we’re committed to investing in research and development efforts on chicken, commercial agricultural packages, and crops like avocado, sweet potatoes, and beans to create a path from subsistence to commercial farming. As a next step, we must scale production that emphasizes high-profit crops and products and ensure the inclusion of these emerging food value chains into our agri-food system. For example, the commercialization of vegetable crops in domestic and international markets and the inclusion of chicken in our national nutrition strategy are successful scaling-up stories with positive impacts on smallholder farmers’ lives. A shift in husbandry practices At the same time, successful commercialization vests on consistent production, which makes this model sensitive to climate change. Agriculture is highly dependent on good and predictable weather conditions — optimal temperature, regular rainfall, and other variables. Broadly speaking, when agricultural production tends to be higher, so does its contribution to the greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Our biggest challenge today is to transform production without creating adverse impacts on limited environmental resources. Our growing rural population densities profoundly affect farming systems, and the environment has taken a beating: our soils are acidic and less fertile than they were a decade ago. Our agricultural and rural development strategies need to more fully anticipate the implications of our rapidly changing land and demographic realities. More specifically, efforts around transformative climate adaptation can aid commercialization without compromising resilience. Good soils are the basis of thriving agriculture. Simple land management techniques, such as building terraces to prevent erosion, mulching, applying lime, and agroforestry, can aid in reviving soil health. Although these are already well known, not everyone practices them. We need to roll out a systematic program to reach as many farmers as possible teaching such practices. Another low-cost, high-return prop to commercialization is crop diversification. Orienting food production towards non-traditional crop varieties, such as high-iron beans and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, can help improve productivity during short-rain seasons, stabilize output when intercropped with staples, enhance food security, and mitigate climate change risk. Diversification expands the number of potential crop types for markets, supports household nutrition needs, and is a robust option towards creating resilient agricultural systems. Supporting more farmers to begin commercializing their farming in sustainable ways is a promising, long-term strategy to improve rural incomes, ramp up food production,and provide livelihood safety nets to smallholders. The author is Legal Counsel at One Acre Fund-TUBURA.
