The East Africa Grains Council intends to assist local farmers to increase productivity and profits through an ambitious plan that would see grain farming register attractive returns. 

The board chairperson of the Post Harvest and Storage Taskforce in the Ministry of Agriculture, Francois Nsengiyumva, told the Rwanda Grain Stakeholder Forum in Kigali, yesterday, that this would help empower local farmers. 

"The Ministry of Agriculture does recognise the role played by the grains sector in Rwanda in producing and providing food for our people, creating employment as well as contributing to economic development of our country,” said Nsengiyumva. 

He told participants at the forum that "the government is looking to the sector getting organised such that we can have strong channels of communication.” 

Nsengiyumva listed challenges the farmers face, including production and low productivity, low access and usage of agricultural inputs and fertilisers, low access to finance, credits and market, standards and food safety concerns as well as high post harvest loses. 

"We are taking measures to address those issues in the wider agriculture sector as well as in the grains and cereals sector. Some of the measures include the support to small holder farmers to increase production and productivity through the crop intensification programme,” said Nsengiyumva. 

The way to Rwanda

During the forum, the Executive Director of East African Grain Council, Gerald Makau Masila, said his organisation is looking into possible ways of penetrating deeper into Rwanda to assist the grains sector overcome productivity and market challenges. 

"Currently we are assessing the status of the sector in Rwanda to see how best we can integrate it in the regional sector. So far, to achieve that we need to look into the grains value change meaning we need to assess, production, post harvest, trade, processing and distribution,” said Masila. 

In the new strategy, the regional grain trade body seeks to organise farmers and millers, so as they benefit from the economies of scale. 

Masila added that for the grain value chain to be realised, there is need to engage stakeholders on the policy level. 

This, he argued, would shield farmers from the exploitative hands of the middlemen, whose key goal is to profit from farmers. 

More critical is that during bumper harvests, the EAGC would be calling on farmers to store their grains in established centres awaiting sale, at a "good” price.