Modernising agriculture through a ‘new’ Green Revolution: the limits of the Crop Intensification Programme in Rwanda

Abstract

Over the past decade, African agriculture sectors have been the object of numerous initiatives advancing a ‘new’ Green Revolution for the continent. The low productivity of African smallholders is attributed to the low use of modern, improved agricultural inputs. In short, African countries are expected to catch up with the Green Revolution in other parts of the world. This paper is a contribution to the debate on the new African Green Revolution. We analyse the Rwandan Crop Intensification Programme (CIP) as a case study of the application of the African Green Revolution model. The paper is based on research at the macro, meso and micro levels. We argue that the CIP fails to draw lessons from previous Green Revolution experiences in terms of its effects on social differentiation, on ecological sustainability, and on knowledge exchange and creation.

[Moderniser l’agriculture par une ‘nouvelle’ Révolution verte : les limites du « Crop intensification programme » au Rwanda.] Pendant les dernières dix années, les secteurs agricoles des pays africains ont connu un nombre important d’initiatives pour la promotion d’une ‘nouvelle’ Révolution verte pour le continent. A cause de la faible productivité de leurs activités agricoles, en fait, il est demandé aux petits producteurs africains de rattraper leur désavantage par rapport aux pays de la Révolution verte. Cet article est une contribution au débat sur la nouvelle Révolution verte en Afrique. L’article analyse le Programme d’intensification des cultures rwandais (Crop Intensification Programme, CIP) en tant qu’étude de cas de l’application du modèle de la Révolution verte. La discussion présentée dans cet article dérive d’un effort de recherche à trois niveaux : macro, meso et micro. L’analyse révèle que le CIP ne prend pas en considérations les résultats des expériences précédentes de Révolution verte, en particulier pour ce qui concerne des questions de différentiation sociale, de durabilité environnementale et de création et diffusion des connaissances.

Keywords:

• agriculture
• Green Revolution
• Rwanda
• modernisation
• livelihoods
• CIP

Mots-clés:

• agriculture
• Révolution verte
• Rwanda
• modernisation
• moyens d’existence
• CIP

Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Cioffo is a PhD student at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) where he studies processes of agrarian modernisation in Rwanda. He is interested in the social and environmental dynamics linked to Green Revolution models as well as in small family farming and agrarian change in developing countries.

An Ansoms is assistant professor in Development Studies at the Université Catholique de Louvain. She is involved in research on rural development in land-scarce (post-)conflict environments, and particularly focuses on the Great Lakes Region in Africa. She has co-edited two books, Natural resources and local livelihoods in the Great Lakes Region: a political economy perspective (Palgrave, 2011) and Emotional and ethical challenges for field research in Africa: the story behind the findings (Palgrave, 2013).

Jude Murison is a graduate of the Universities of York and Edinburgh, and holds a doctorate in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. Jude previously taught in Belgium and at the University of Warwick, UK, and has held Visiting Fellowships at Makerere University, Uganda and Sciences-Po, Paris. Jude has conducted field research in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her research focuses on human rights, transitional justice, forced migration, health, rural development and agricultural production.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Morgan and Murdoch (2000) use this concept in the same way that it was introduced by Polanyi in 1966.

2. The 2005 organic land law also follows this rationale (see Polanyi 1966).

3. The Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) is a measure of food insecurity developed by USAID (2007). The HFIAS measures the food insecurity positions of households at a given point in time, and therefore does not provide an indication of variation over time (linked for example to seasonal variations, change in input availability, etc.): this should be kept in mind during discussion of the data. However, when triangulated with qualitative data, it may provide a strong indication of the food security trends for the households concerned.

4. The initial sample included 154 households. However, one household did not consent to participate in the HFIAS assessment, while the other three only provided incomplete answers to the HFIAS questionnaire.

5. Ubudehe lists divide the population in six ascending socio-economic categories. The average ubudehe category of the selected household is 2.75. The use of ubudehe lists is problematic in itself, as our own fieldwork experience suggests that being placed in one ubudehe category rather than another is often dependent on local politics rather than on household wealth. In our 2013 study, in fact, relatively wealthy households with good connections would often be placed in lower categories by local authorities. Similarly, poor households would often be placed in higher ubudehe classes, in order to meet poverty reduction goals. Therefore, the sample was adjusted during the research through snowball sampling in order to correct these biases.

6. Households belonging to the first category are defined as ‘the most vulnerable’ (abatindi nyajujya), and own no land to cultivate. Farmers in the second, third and fourth ubudehe classes are respectively identified as: vulnerable (abatindi), owning very small plots and combining agriculture with agricultural wage work; poor (abakene), owning small plots from which they manage to feed their household and, more rarely, engage in agricultural work; non-poor (abakene bifashije), working on their own plots and accumulating a small surplus. Farmers in the fifth and sixth categories are respectively defined as: wealthy (abakungu), owning fertile land, cattle, savings and often employing agricultural work; and very wealthy (abakire), who mostly employ agricultural workers, have access to savings and may live in urban centres (see Ansoms 2010, 100).

7. Ideally, we would have calculated the consolidation rate on the basis of the percentage of cultivated and consolidated area out of the total area the household cultivates. Although this would be a more accurate measure, data on the exact household cultivated areas were only available for less than a half of the sample.

8. rC= cP/nP.

9. This could be explained as a result of the fact that households with only one plot of land are generally poorer and more food insecure. These households either have a consolidation rate of 0 (if their plot is not consolidated) or 1 (if their plot is consolidated).

Additional information

Funding

Part of the research presented in this article was funded by the project ‘Empowering the poor or protecting the powerful? A case study on land dynamics in Rwanda and Burundi’ (promoter F. Reyntjens, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp).