NORTHERN PROVINCE

In a move to transform rural agriculture from subsistence to agro-processing system, farmers have been asked to practice communal cultivation in order to increase production.

As residents shift to settle in cells, their portions of land shall be merged and a particular type of crop will be grown in this land by all the farmers.

This will, promote large scale production, but above all mark a new strategy in the rural transformation and development campaign on which government has put emphasis.

This issue (merging plots) was the center of debate during the signing of performance contracts by the Imidugudu, cells and sectors before the district mayor Aime Bosenibamwe, of Burera district.

The large district is being narrowed by the continued division of land amongst the family members, and neighbors making it difficult to carry out rational cultivation.

The mayor called for an ‘integrated development program to be implemented’, signing performance contracts with the families for 2008, growing modified seeds and application of fertilizers.

Jean Damascene Ntuyemurwanga, the executive secretary of Rweru cell casts doubt on the initiative saying that whereas residents are willing to cooperate, they fear to relinquish their small plots for a community cause, arguing that they will eventually lose it.

Local farmers should first be made to understand that by merging land, they will not lose it but largely profit to gain new modified seeds and a stable market especially for the Irish potatoes.

In Burera, Irish growers are decrying the unstable prices which are being distorted by the ‘brokers’ middlemen who take their crops at low prices.

They asked the district to terminate the contract they signed with CECAM, a company which buys Irish potatoes in the province saying that they have failed to stabilize the prices and cheating them.

Now that RADA (Rwanda Agriculture Development Agency) has pledged to donate six tons of modified Irish seeds to every sector in Burera district leaders should set an example in changing their farming system for others to follow suit.

They should practice what they preach as a demonstration to the locals that change is possible this way. Farmers in Kinigi mix-up the growing of crops like pyrethrum, maize and Irish potatoes on the same pieces of land, with hope of gaining more products.

Secondly, they too should set up microfinance and the districts should set apart finance adapted to agriculture transformation, but the role of the Agriculture engineers should be seen in changing the concept, methods and farming behavior.

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