Farming for future
Women at the core of Rwanda’s pineapple market
Photos: Kieron Crawley/Oxfam
Photos: Kieron Crawley/Oxfam
In recent years and with the support of Irish Aid, we’ve been working with small farmers to shift from subsistence farming – producing enough to feed themselves and their families – to growing pineapples as a collective. Pineapple is a high-value crop that can be sold locally and on the international market.
Working with our partner Duterimbere, we ensured that members of the pineapple farmers’ co-operative in Gakenke District, northern Rwanda, were trained in horticulture, organic compost making, seedlings and fertiliser.
The group initially started off with two hectares of land on which to grow their produce but later took advantage of Duterimbere’s support and expertise to successfully lobby the government district office for another two hectares of state land.
The farmers are now producing so many pineapples that the nearby processing centre – which makes juice, wine and dried fruit from the group’s crops – can hardly cope at harvest time.
The co-operative has transformed the lives of its members, with many using the extra money they’re making to improve their homes. Malnutrition in the community has been eliminated and all of the farmers are now earning enough to pay health insurance, something that few of them could afford previously.
They are also considering setting up their own processing centre and getting transport so that they can sell their produce further afield.
“Before the project we didn’t get respect because our husbands were the sole breadwinners – now we are also proud to contribute to the upkeep of the household.”
“Buying our own clothes without waiting for our husbands has increased our self-esteem”
The impact of the pandemic
When COVID-19 broke out in Rwanda earlier this year, we knew it would affect farmers being supported by our programme work. We carried out a rapid assessment on how farmers and food producers were faring amid the crisis and what we could do to mitigate the negative impacts of the crisis.
What we found was that COVID-19 affected the ability of producers to supply to the market at the same level as before, due to different measures to contain the pandemic. Production and harvesting capacity have also been disrupted by restrictions and social distancing. In addition, farmers couldn’t buy seeds and fertilisers because domestic and international travel restrictions reduced supply.
There were other problems too: the demand for exports collapsed while local communities only wanted to buy basic vegetables and staple foods such as rice and maize.
Among the measures we implemented was a COVID-19 recovery plan for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the agri-food sector. We have already distributed approximately 18 million Rwandan Francs (RFs) in grant supports to two of the five SMEs with which we work.
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