Govt moves to rehabilitate farms destroyed by floods
Wednesday July 01 2020
Preliminary assessments by the emergency management ministry had indicated that heavy rains destroyed at least 5,000 hectares of crop fields nationwide between April and May. Photo | Cyril Ndegeya
Farmers in areas worst hit by the April-May floods now hope to a return to normal planting after a season of crop losses when the government completes rehabilitation of the destroyed farms.
Rwanda Today learnt that the government will spend a portion of Rwf122.4 billion allocation towards boosting food production for covering rehabilitation costs in marshlands worst hit by the torrential rains in recent months nationwide.
The government injected over Rwf1 billion to redesign and extend the dykes, remove the layers of sand and clear drainage systems and access roads along Rurambi marshland where floods washed away rice crop fields on more than 645.8 hectares of land.
Wenceslas Karasira, the head of the co-operative said Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB) had finalised an agreement with the contractor to do repair works expected to enable farming to re-sume farming at the end of July.
“RAB has also committed to provide farmers with seeds and fertilises at no cost. We normally use more than 10 tonnes of seeds and 100 tonnes of fertilizer for the season,” he said.
Details of the 2020/21 budget approved by parliament this week show similar interventions will take place in five other flood-hit marshlands— Rwamagana, Bugarama, Umuvumba, Gatuna and Kamiranzovu.
Rains that intensified during weeks of April 1 to May 28 caused staggering losses to farmers, washing away staple crops such as rice, maize, beans and horticulture.
Unlike hillside where farmers recovered a chunk of the affected crop fields or were able to replant short cycle crops in the floods aftermath, farmlands in low lying areas were covered by sand, and drainage systems destroyed.
It is estimated that in addition to funding repair works, the government will put another chunk of its budget to providing inputs namely seeds and fertilizer for many who suffered uninsured damage to their property to enable resumption of food production after losing everything to the rains.
The government is banking on the intensive cultivation of irrigated marshlands, as well as hillsides in Season 2020 C to ensure food self-Sufficiency as part of the bigger plan to strengthen the strategic food reserves with a projection of storing an equivalent of maize and beans for 10 per cent of the population at 2,500 kilocalories per person per day.
Ministry of agriculture plans to store up more than 7,000 tonnes of maize and 3, 000 tonnes of beans in the next financial year.
Rwanda Today did not obtained figures on the full extent of floods effects on the sector by press time.