Rwadan small scale farmers. The government will also promote a vibrant
and demand-driven research sector that develops and disseminates
locally-adapted inputs, technologies, and innovations to improve
productivity and mitigate risks. PHOTO FILE | NATION
Next year, Rwanda's government will start implementing the
Rwf2.7 trillion ($3.2 billion) fourth agriculture transformation agenda,
with new targets to drive growth of a sector considered central to
achieving middle-income status.
The final draft of the
Fourth Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation (PSTA4), only
awaits to be adopted into the budgets of the next six fiscal years
starting 2018.
The six-year plan includes a response to
emerging climate-related challenges coupled with pressure to feed and
provide employment to the growing population amid the constraints of
limited land. This will see the government invest in irrigation and
research.
Projections show the government will increase
the acreage under irrigation from 48,500ha to 102,281ha in the next six
years to 2023.
This will involve expanding marshland
to 60,023ha and hillside irrigation to 13,413ha, while small-scale
irrigation will expand six-fold to 28,848ha from the current 4,574ha.
The
strategy also outlines a roadmap for tackling inefficiencies in
provision of inputs and constraints to value addition, as well as issues
around nutrition.
The strategy involved consultations
between local, regional and international stakeholders and facilitated
by the Agriculture Ministry.
Agriculture Minister
Geraldine Mukeshimana said the plan took into consideration the
commitments the country made through various conventions it ratified on
eradication of hunger and poverty in the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), and the Malabo Declaration.
“We also aligned
the new strategy to changes in the environment and settlement policies
because concerns around climate change and rapid urbanisation were not
at the level we see today when we designed the previous phases,” she
said.
Emerging challenges
PSTA
4 will be implemented alongside the updated National Agriculture
Policy, which seeks to solve existing and emerging challenges in the
sector.
Agriculture, which remains largely rain-fed,
suffers a number of constraints on productivity and profitability.
Farmers’ ability to adequately feed themselves is limited as they are
exposed to periodic droughts and floods.
Besides, the
growing population has exacerbated land fragmentation as well as soil
degradation due to individual parcels shrinking further.
This
has negatively impacted the country’s ability to bring food and
nutrition security to desired levels even as overall production rises.
Figures from the National Institute of Statistics for 2015 show the overall stunting rates remain high at 38 per cent.
The
government says that by prioritising food security and poverty
eradication in the PSTA 4, particular attention will be paid to ensuring
that agricultural production is nutrition sensitive, sustainable and
resilient.
Ms Mukeshimana said the strategy could see
food insecure households and specifically those living below the poverty
line reduced to 15 per cent by 2023 while a “business as usual”
approach would only reduce it to only 21.8 per cent from the current 39
per cent.
Under the updated PSTA 4, the government also
seeks to see average income per farming household increased by 5.8 per
cent, and the sector’s annual contribution to GDP increased by 10 per
cent from 30 per cent to help improve the livelihoods of smallholder
farmers while also absorbing unemployed rural youth.
Projections
show more than 178,000 jobs will be created in the agriculture sector’s
value chain through primary production and agro-processing, which will
see creation of employment as a result of subsequent spillover to other
sectors.
The government will also promote a vibrant and
demand-driven research sector that develops and disseminates
locally-adapted inputs, technologies, and innovations to improve
productivity and mitigate risks.
Minagri says
investment in research and manpower will deliver solutions to deal with
soil health and fertility, pest, and disease-resistant crop varieties
and animal genetic improvement, integrated farming systems, including
climate smart agriculture and crop or livestock integration.
These
measures are expected to significantly drive up yields per hectare on
priority crops like maize, rice, wheat, cassava, sweet potatoes, Irish
potatoes, banana,beans, soya, and others.
Related stories:
No comments :
Post a Comment