Diane Nyirahabyarimana, a smallholder farmer from Bukinanyana village in Nyabihu District owns 3 acres of land where she grows Irish potatoes
and horticulture to feed her family and takes the rest to the market. Nyirahabyarimana practices regenerative agriculture which has drastically increased productivity from her small piece of land. Some of the practices she employed were to use more organic fertilizers than chemical, integrated pest management and setting soil and water conservation to stop erosion.
Before the introduction of the new practice, she says production was very low even after using good seeds, chemical fertilizers and spraying pesticides.
“I used to purchase good vegetable seeds, use non-decomposed farmyard manure, and more than 5kg of NPK (17, 17, 17), spray fun- gicides 6 to 8 times per season to control pests and diseases.
Unfortunately, the maximum weight of a harvested cab- bage or Curl flower could weigh less than 1kg with all these high investments,” Nyirahabyarimana testifies. In the last two seasons 2022A & B, after learning of regenerative agricultural practices and some technical support from Rwanda Development Organization (RDO), she harvested curl flowers each weighing between 5 and 6.5kgs.
Nyirahabyarimana was among the 80 Farmer Field School (FFS) facilitators from Nyabihu and Ngororero Districts trained in 2022 by RDO under the Regenerative Agricultural practices for improved Livelihoods and Market Systems (REALMS Project).
FFS facilitators trained on different regenerative agriculture practices, which included but not limited to integrated soil fertility management such as the use of well-decomposed compost, production, and use of liquid organic fertilizers, use of complete biological extract liquid fertilizer (CBX), reduction on use of inorganic fertilizers, mulching, and integrated pest management (IPM) techniques that are used to control pests and diseases like integration of onions with cabbage for controlling insect pests mainly white aphids.
The project is targeting at least 2,500 smallholder farmers in the two districts where RDO implements REALMS with support from SNV-Rwanda.
To reach more farmers, each facilitator has established a FFS group of at least 20 members where smallholder farmers gather to learn regenerative agricultural practices.
These farmers are also coached on how to monitor their fields and apply integrated pest management practices, and therefore, pesticide application has been reduced.
Farmers like Nyirahabyarimana’s eagerness to raise production keeps growing, after an increase of 65% in yield as a result of the adoption of the practices. For season B 2023, she decided to lend her plot of land to the REALMS project to be used for training FFS facilitators because she wants to learn more about different cascade regenerative agricultural practice and cascade her knowledge to neighbors who haven’t had a chance to learn the new practices.
Nyirahabyarimana and husband are committed to adoption of regenerative agricultural practices on their entire land, and they promise to continue because of the increased production and soil health improvement. Besides the knowledge and skill she has learned, life has improved, from the extra income earned from vegetables, she managed to shift from use of firewood and charcoal cooking methods to the use of gas by purchasing a gas cooker at Rwf.99,000. in bid to protect environment.
She is very thankful to RDO and SNV-Rwanda for the training and knowledge, which are leading to economic benefits, such as reduced inputs, increased yields, better prices and increased soil quality.
