Succeeding through mixed farming

Modesta Zibera is one of the most successful farmers in Rwanda. With reasonable hectares of well prepared land, only a dozen kilometers from the capital Kigali, in Rwamagana district, Zibera produces maize and vegetables for the big Kigali market. He hires her neighbours to help with planting and harvesting. While many people move to the big city in pursuit of easy and a life of luxury, after making big money in rural areas, the 53-year-old farmer has other ambitions - breathing new life into the agricultural community- an industry which many people regard as reserved for the poor. Zibera, one of the few emerging commercial farmers, was given a chance to manage his own farm when he inherited a farm from his father. “Part of this land, I inherited from my father and kept on enlarging it slowly, by buying from those willing to sell. Farming is a family business, my parents and grandparents did it before,” said Modesta. His ever green mixed-farm as is divided in such a way that there are hectares of extensive vegetable land, maize growing, while the remainder is grazing land. On visiting the farm, the strong middle aged man wearing black trousers, a casual light white T- shirt, black socks and long boots will introduce you to the farm. You will marvel at his healthy black and white Friesian cows. He will move you around the vast beautiful farm and believe it, if you are not physically fit, then you will collapse in the valleys and low lying hill covered with savanna grass. It is such a big farm! He has employed over a hundred people both women and men. Some of the strongest and most disciplined amongst them are permanently employed. Born in Rutonde village, of Rwamagana district, Zibera’s love for farming began developing when he was just 5 years old. His father was a subsistence farmer. “Subsistence farming was the order of the day by that time. Our fathers reared cows mainly for prestigious purposes. Today the story is different, and we have gone for full scale commercial farming. “At first I thought only about cattle keeping, but I have come up with an idea to go for crops and poultry,” he says.Even though mixed farming has its known disadvantages like dividing attention and resources over several activities, thus leading to reduced economies of scale, the farmer enjoys several advantages including the possibility of reducing risk, spreading labour and re-utilizing resources. “Mixing of several parts requires a special approach to make a success of the total mix. What counts however, is the yield of the total, not of the parts,” notes Zibera. According to Rwamagana district agriculture officer, Jean de Dieu Ntiyitanga farmers can decide to opt for mixed farming when they want to save resources by interchanging them on the farm – “It permits wider crop rotations and thus reduces dependence on chemicals, because they consider mixed systems closer to nature, or because they allow diversification for better risk management,” says Ntiyitanga. The agriculture official emphasized that Zibera mixed farming is profitable in many ways, as it offers choices.He noted that diversified systems consist of components such as crops and livestock that co-exist independently from each other. “In particular, farmers can have dairy and crops as quite independent units. In this case the mixing of crops and livestock primarily serves to minimize risk and not to recycle resources.” In addition, Zibera has set a target of a big poultry farm of over 3000 layers and broilers. “I cannot tire…my work is to maximize mixed farming. The cows and vegetable business is already settled. I can now eye poultry. You know with farming you can’t go wrong,” says Zibera. The towering farmer spends most of his time on his farm, but sometimes drives to Kigali for farm inputs. He is a man that you can rarely meet without a stick in his hand- a sign of an all season rural farmer. Ends