Soil Fertility and Manure Management—Lessons from the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Girinka Farmers in the District of Ngoma, Rwanda

Abstract

Girinka—or the “one-cow per poor family” program—is currently promoted as a poverty reduction strategy in Rwanda. In this program, resource-poor farmers receive a dairy cow and develop various skills and assets to improve their livelihood. One potential benefit of the program is to improve soil fertility through the application of manure. A study was conducted in the Ngoma district of Rwanda to assess the effectiveness of manure usage and current levels of manure knowledge, attitudes, and practices among the program beneficiaries. Our results suggest that more than 90% of Girinka farmers are using manure, and farmers positively attributed increased crop yields and improved soil fertility to manure use. However, farmers were not consistently using recommended manure management practices, citing lack of manure handling and transporting tools, distance to fields, and poor construction of cow sheds as key limiting factors. Significant differences in manure management, access to information and extension services, and constraints hindering manure usage among male and female farmers were also identified in this study. We recommend stronger emphasis on beneficial manure management practices during the Girinka trainings and suggest several ways to improve the potential benefits of manure usage for Girinka farmers in this region of Rwanda.

Keywords:

• Girinka program
• manure
• one-cow farming system
• Rwanda
• soil fertility

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank all the Girinka farmers who generously accorded their time in this study; the mayor and vice mayor of Ngoma district for their sincere interest and administrative support in this research; all the veterinarians and agronomists at the district of Ngoma who provided timely assistance in fieldwork operations and logistics; and the survey team of students from INATEK who were instrumental in data collection. We gratefully acknowledge all the key informants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, the Rwanda Animal Resources Development Authority and the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research in Rwanda. Sincere appreciation goes to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

This study was made possible thanks to a research award from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The opinions, findings, and recommendations expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDRC.