Social-Economic Determinants of Food Security among Smallholder Farmers in Burera District, Rwanda

Abstract

The agricultural sector is the backbone of the Rwandan economy, contributing 33% of the GDP. It has recorded steady increases in the last decade. While Rwanda is classified as food secure at macro level, about half of the households in Rwanda still face seasonal difficulties in accessing adequate food, meaning that they are at high risk of becoming food insecure in terms of food availability and accessibility. Most of the households at risk are typically rural households who mainly depend on agricultural daily labour for their livelihoods and mostly live on their own farm production. The objective of this study was to investigate the Socio-economic determinants of food security among the mixed smallholder farmers in Burera district of Rwanda. Data were collected from 378 smallholder farmers ’households selected by using a Multi-Stage Random Sampling technique. Household food security status was assessed and categorized using internationally validated HFIAS tool. To analyse the effect of socio-economic determinants of household food security status of the sampled smallholder farmers, Multinomial Logit Model was used. The results revealed that only 6.3% of the sampled smallholder farmers’ households could be classified as food secure, 15.6% of the households were found to be mildly food insecure, while 34.7% were moderately food insecure and 43.4% were found to be severely food insecure, which implies that a majority of the smallholder farmers in the study area live in food insecurity situation. The study also revealed that 77.7% of the respondents were operating on farm size less than one hectare. About 54.2% of the respondent households had at least one medium to large livestock (cow, goat, sheep or pig) that helped them to produce organic manure, with only 15.87% having cows in their households. The study revealed that 42.9% of the respondents earned on farm income range of 200,000-300,000Frw. About 72% of the respondents did not have access to financial facility while 92% of the respondents did not receive any training in agricultural practices or a home visit from an extension agent within the previous one-year period. Only 25% of the respondents had ever used mineral fertilizers in the previous two agricultural seasons. The Multinomial Logit model odds ratios revealed that farm size, on-farm income and gender (women headed households) were found to influence positively the probability of a household to be in the category of food secure or better off food insecurity level (mild or moderate) when compared to severe food insecurity status. On the other hand, family size, poor access to financial facilities, agricultural trainings and extension services, as well as low education level of the household head had a negative effect on the probability of a household to be in better off category of food security status when compared to the severe food insecurity. Based on the findings, the study recommends to strengthen the implementation of the land use consolidation policy among the smallholder farmers, which would ease efficient exploitation of consolidate land capital units as well as easy access to subsidized fertilizers and agricultural extension assistance. The study further recommends policy actions aimed at more income generation and optimal exploitation of the available surplus labour among the smallholder farmers. This could be through development of rural based agro-processing enterprises. Efforts to increase awareness on women empowerment and financial literacy among the smallholder farmers are also recommended.