Potential Impact of Alternative Agricultural Technologies to Ensure Food Security and Raise Income of Farm Households in Rwanda

Abstract

Rapid population growth and stagnation of agricultural yields in Rwanda have caused a steady decline in food production per capita, a continuous expansion towards the use of marginal land and a strong degradation of land. The challenge of simultaneously achieving food security, rural welfare, land protection and soil fertility regeneration in the face of its high population is overwhelming to Rwanda. The objectives of this article are to assess the potential impacts of the alternative agricultural technologies on income, food production and soil loss for four arable farm household types and to assess policies that could induce adoption of these technologies. These include combined use of Tithonia diversifolia (green manure) and Diammonium phosphate. The bio-economic farm household model used has a form of a mathematical form of quadratic programming model. Model results show that these alternative agricultural technologies will clearly enhance food production and income for all farm household types except the full-time farm household for which cash at the beginning of the season is too restricted to switch to the new technologies. The outcomes of the model also reveal that with alternative technologies soil loss and soil organic carbon do not entail negative economic consequences. Off-farm employment policy will have a high impact on adoption among households with small farms and less off-farm opportunities because it provides cash that is needed to adopt the new technologies.

Keywords:

• Rwanda
• current agricultural technologies
• alternative agricultural technologies
• policy incentives
• adoption of technology

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to two unknown reviewers and the editor who have enormously contributed to improve this article.

Notes on contributors

Currently, Jean-Claude Bidogeza is a socio-economist at AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center, and he is stationed in Yaounde (Cameroon). He works with in the context of Humidtropic program, one the new 15 CGIAR research programs. He coordinates the AVRDC humidtropic activities in Sub Saharan Africa. Before taking up that position, Jean-Claude was an international consultant, Research Associate and Scientist, respectively at UNCTAD, FARA (Accra-Ghana) and IFDC (Nairobi-Kenya). He holds an Engineer (1996) in agricultural sciences from University of Burundi, MSc (2003) in Management of Physical Land Resources from Ghent University-Belgium, and a PhD (2011) in Business Economics from Wageningen University in Netherlands. He has been a Visiting Scientist (2009) at Georgia University in USA.

Paul B.M. Berentsen is senior lecturer and researcher at the Business Economics Group of Wageningen University. He holds a PhD (1999) and an MSc (1988) in Agricultural Economics from Wageningen University. He teaches courses in Farm Management and Mathematical Programming and he supervises MSc- and PhD-students. His research fields are animal production, environmental load, nature production, and Common Agricultural Policy. He is the former editor and current member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the peer-reviewed journal Agricultural Systems.

Jan de Graaff is retiring senior lecturer with the Land Degradation and Development group of Wageningen University. He holds an MSc in Development Economics and his PhD Thesis (1996) was entitled ‘The price of soil erosion; the economics of soil conservation and watershed development'. He worked many years for FAO and for the Royal Tropical Institute in several countries on economics of soil and water conservation, before joining Wageningen University. He is involved in lecturing in impact evaluation of land and water management, in several EU and other research projects in southern Europe and Africa, and he is author of many articles and several books (e.g. on Economics of coffee).

Alfons Oude Lansink is a Professor of Business Economics at Wageningen University. He holds a PhD in agricultural economics from Wageningen University. His main areas of research are micro-econometric modelling, efficiency and productivity analysis and economics of plant health. He is involved as a partner and workpackage leader in several EU projects and is a member of the scientific panel of plant health from the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). Furthermore, he is member of the editorial board of the European Review of Agricultural Economics.