A new initiative to equip farmers with basic farming techniques has been introduced by Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB).RAB has selected 14,837 model farmers who will be in charge of educating other farmers at the village level, aimed at improving farmers’ productivity, especially small-scale holders. “We had an exercise that determined who can be a model farmer and this based on their yields over time,” said Innocent Musabyimana, the Deputy Director General in charge of Agriculture Extension at RAB.Dubbed farmer-to-farmer extension approach, Musabyimana said that the system is expected to build capacities for farmers to deal with their own problems.Among the best agricultural practices that the model farmers will build include fertilizer application know-how, mechanisms to help fight soil erosion, disease control as well as encouraging timely and high quality seed planting.“According to our findings, poor farming methods that easily lead to soil erosion is one of the major factors that have led to poor harvest among some farmers,” Mechanization in agriculture will also be encouraged.RAB will conduct various trainings for model farmers to further build on their skills. As part of the programme, model farmers recently completed the first training module that equipped them with knowledge about the steps that will be taken in the implementation of the programme.The model farmers will also be in charge of reporting any sign or cases of disease outbreak in a way of preventing and fighting against diseases in agriculture. Some RAB official who spoke to The New Times about the development said that reporting disease out breaks in villages was sometimes done late as most farmers take long to notice it.The new initiative follows many other measures that RAB has put in place to increase farmer`s productivity and food security. These also include Sector Agronomists and programmes like the land Consolidation and Crop Intensification Programme.
