Feed the Future Activity Supports Female Pineapple Growers in Rwanda to Strengthen Economic and Social Resilience

Feed the Future Activity Supports Female Pineapple Growers in Rwanda to Strengthen Economic and Social Resilience

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This article was originally published by Agrilinks on March 23, 2022.

“Growing up, I was made to believe that girls were only meant to get married and after look after their spouse,” says Josiane Musabyimana, a mother of two and a resident of Mugesera sector in Ngoma district, Rwanda.

It is this mentality that continued to work against Musabyimana most of her adult life. Faced with limited choices and resources, Musabyimana opted to raise just enough to feed her family, but always dreamed of doing more. In 2019, Musabyimana enrolled in a solidarity group of 19 members from her locality, which was facilitated by the USAID-funded Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze activity. Solidarity groups are made up of 10-15 members whose aim is to engage in income-generating activities and to save for a purpose.

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Reducing Postharvest Losses for Persons with Disabilities

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This article was originally published by Agrilinks on March 8, 2022.

Although Rwanda has registered remarkable progress in including socially disadvantaged groups, persons with disabilities (PWDs) still face many cultural and socioeconomic barriers that inhibit them from accessing income-generating opportunities.

Founded in 2007, Twisungane Mageragere, a 140-member cooperative based in the Rutsiro district, strives to ensure their members with disabilities meaningfully and consistently gain from income-generating activities through cultivating reliable markets for their produce.

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Changing Male Perception Toward Domestic Duties in Rwanda

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This article was originally published by Agrilinks on March 1, 2022.

Although Rwanda has registered remarkable improvements in gender equality, some men continue to shun domestic duties as reserved for women. Those who get involved in domestic chores often end up being ridiculed by fellow males as “inganzwa” (a reference to a husband who is subservient to his wife), a tendency that discourages males from supporting their wives at home.

Elaste Mbonimpaye, a resident of Kabusunzu village in the Kayonza district, vowed to support his family and change this status quo.

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Could farm service centres end delays in agro-inputs distribution?

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This article was originally published in The New Times on January 4, 2022.

Officials in Gatsibo District have assured farmers that they are addressing delays in distribution of agro-inputs and improved access to improved agro-inputs in Eastern Province following the establishment of a Rwf325m farm service centre.

The Rwf325 million one-stop Farm Service Center in Kabarore sector offers farm inputs, animal feeds and training services to smallholder farmers.

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Improving Cashew Production via Inspiring Community-Led Films

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This op-ed by Sheryl Cowan, Senior Vice President of Programs at Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA) and Jean Francois, Chief of Party for CNFA’s USDA West Africa Cashew PRO-Cashew Project (PRO-Cashew), was originally published by Farming First on December 15, 2021.

Married with five children, Irié Lou Tinan Rosalie lives in Gouenfla, a village within the Zuenoula department in the western part of central Côte d’Ivoire. Like most women in her village, she works with her husband to maintain and harvest the family’s four-hectare cashew plantation, even though she was never formally trained. Cashew production is an important industry in Côte d’Ivoire, which holds nearly 25 per cent of the world’s cashew nut market.

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Harnessing expertise across sectors: How industry leaders came together to develop best in class tool

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Bags of seeds

This article was originally published on the SCOPEinsight on September 17, 2021.

Agro-input retailers are very important to the success of their local agricultural communities. To help those communities, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA) has become an expert at professionalizing and supporting agro-input retailers worldwide. The creation of the SCOPE Input Retailer tool is one way of helping to provide this support. Read how CNFA, the IFCBayerSyngenta and SCOPEinsight developed an approach to propel small agro-input retailers into powerhouses in their communities.

A strong, professional input retailer can have a massive impact on its local agricultural community. An effective input retailer should – at a minimum – provide seeds, fertilizers, agro-chemicals and knowledge to their customers.

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Climate-Smart Agriculture: An Integrated Approach to Address Climate and Food Security Challenges

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Farmer irrigating his field in Ngoma District, Rwanda with solar-powered irrigation pumps.

By Margaret Anderson and Daniel Gies

Like all farmers today, smallholder farmers in food-insecure regions of the world are finding themselves caught at the intersection of climate change and the growing demand for food. Rising temperatures and changes in precipitation levels threaten food production and nutrition in countless rural communities that already struggle to satisfy their most basic food requirements.

And they are losing ground. A 2020 report found that nearly 690 million people — or 8.9 percent of the global population — are hungry, an increase of nearly 60 million in five years. Worse yet, food security will only become more difficult to attain in the future. Thirty years from now, the world’s farmers will need to produce about 70 percent more food to feed an estimated 9 billion people.

Enter climate-smart agriculture — an integrated approach to agriculture that addresses the interlinked challenges of accelerating climate change and growing food insecurity. Climate-smart agriculture leverages sustainable agricultural technologies and techniques to adapt farming approaches to the new requirements of a changing climate in order to build resilience to climate-related risks, increase production and reduce agriculture-related greenhouse gas emissions.

The Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze Activity, a five-year USAID-funded activity implemented by Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), is successfully putting this approach into action to improve the nutritional status of Rwandan women and children, strengthen Rwandan food systems’ resilience to a changing climate and increase the incomes of smallholder farmers.

Hinga Weze’s climate-smart approach starts at the local level. The Activity’s poultry distribution pilot, for example, sources its chickens from a local supplier, which trains recipients on how to create feed from locally sourced products. This makes chicken-rearing less expensive and limits emissions that result from importing chickens and feed. Hinga Weze also encourages chicken-raising families to share new chicks with their communities to increase the supply of local chicken and further reduce or eliminate the costs and carbon emissions associated with imported chicken. To date, the Activity has distributed 206,652 chickens to 27,572 households. The chickens also produce eggs that can be sold at markets, improve nutrition and increase producer incomes to purchase additional nutritious foods.

Local sourcing of inputs also contributes to the climate-smart production of plant-based food. By using locally available seeds that are suited to local diets, climate and soil conditions, farmers can reduce the financial and environmental costs associated with seed imports, increase their production of nutritious plants and boost profits. Hinga Weze, for example, supports farmers in their efforts to obtain and cultivate 246,147 metric tons of drought-tolerant high-iron beans — particularly in Rwanda’s most arid districts, where the beans are able to produce high yields amid environmental conditions that have decreased the nutritional benefits of other bean varieties. Because beans are a popular dish in Rwanda, communities readily adopt them into their diets, both improving their own nutritional outcomes and increasing farmers’ profitability. The Activity often engages with private agro-input suppliers to strengthen seed systems and boost the availability and distribution of high-iron bean seeds.

At the household level, the Activity also helps 51,927 families grow sustainable and nutritious foods in home gardens. It does this by facilitating families’ access to appropriate seed varieties, providing tailored advice on crop selection and soil health and offering instruction to 68,854 couples and 800 gender role models on how to prepare nutritious meals with the plant-based foods they produce. In this regard, the Activity trained 195,690 individuals and 55,105 home gardens have been established and maintained to support the availability of vegetables all year round, with the overall objective of ensuring adequate calories, protein and micronutrient intake.

As part of its efforts to advance climate-smart agriculture, Hinga Weze also encourages the adoption of earth-friendly technology such as solar pumps, which are powered by the sun rather than by diesel fuel. The pumps not only decrease carbon emissions, but also provide reliable watering capability, add extra seasons of productivity and improve the quality and nutritional value of farmers’ products. The technology has also helped producers in arid areas like Bugesera grow high-quality horticultural crops year-round, export surplus to the European Union and thereby earn additional income they can use to purchase more nutrient-rich foods.

Farmers are also learning to use farm waste to produce compost or fertilizers, building soil health and increasing productivity. Hinga Weze’s poultry pilot, for example, trains beneficiaries to use chicken and other animal waste as organic fertilizer. This not only supports healthy nitrogen levels in the soil, but also mitigates the environmental impact of livestock.

Hinga Weze clearly demonstrates that — with the right inputs, tools and knowledge — well-designed, climate-smart development programs can serve an important role in helping meet the ever-growing challenges of climate change and ensure the food security of populations around the world.

And daily headlines make it clear that we will need many more activities like Hinga Weze in the years ahead to ensure that we meet the needs of feeding the world in a safe and sustainable manner.

The authors are Margaret Anderson and Daniel Gies. Margaret Anderson is senior director, programs at CNFA. Daniel Gies is chief of party of the USAID-funded Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze Activity, implemented by CNFA.

Opinion: How agriculture projects will help the Northern Triangle

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John R. Block and A Michael Espy

This op-ed by former Secretaries of USDA and current CNFA Board of Directors, John R. Block and A. Michael Espy was originally published by Devex on August 10, 2021.

Recent efforts by the United States aimed at tackling the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle have heartened many in the development community who have long sought to address those causes at their source.

People fleeing the region — many driven by food insecurity and crop failure due to years of devastating drought — often endure pain, suffering, and victimization while trying to reach the U.S. border.

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The Role of Food Security in Economic Recovery: Futureproofing and Building Resilience

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This article by CNFA President & CEO, Sylvain Roy, was originally published on the SEEP Network Blog on September 23, 2020.

Food security is inextricably tied to economic wellbeing. They share a reciprocal relationship in which each paves the way for the other. Just as a healthy economy improves a population’s ability to produce, distribute and consume a sustainable supply of nutritious food, a population that enjoys food security is able to move beyond mere subsistence and pursue gainful activities that improve economic conditions at both the individual and societal levels.

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