Farmers have been urged to grow the dry spell resistant varieties of crops in the coming season.

According to expert, maize, soya, wheat, beans, cassava, Irish potatoes, banana plantation, vegetables will do well this season.

“Apart from the region of the north-west of the country, where farmers are almost finishing with planting, other regions like Rutsiro and Ngororero districts have been waiting for the rain to keep up with the planting period,” Francois Hakuzimana, the head of farmers in western region of the country told Rwanda Today.

The government is subsidising prices of fertilisers and seeds of maize, soy and wheat.

Ministry of Agriculture estimates that 780, 496 hectares that will be cultivated during the coming season and will be covered by over 5400 tonnes of seeds and 28,000 tonnes of fertilisers whose prices are subsidised.

Under the government subsidy programme popularly known as Nkunganire, farmers are acquire fertilizers of UREA at Rwf462 per Kilogramme, DAP at Rwf511Kg and NPK 17 17 17 at Rwf615 per kilogramme while seeds of hybrid maize cost in the range of Rwf530 and Rwf1000 per kilogramme.

According to the figures from One Acre Fund, which manages Nkunganire, more than 600,000 farmers acquired inputs on credit, which represents 90 per cent of the farmers who enrolled with Tubura across 27 districts covered by Tubura.

“As we endeavour to observe COVID-19 guidelines set out by the government, we could not distribute inputs to large crowds as we have done in past years.

Instead, we distributed to one home at a time and as a result, the whole distribution process has taken longer.