Investing in on-farm and post-harvest resilience to climate change in smallholder value chains: Lessons from Rwanda

This study assessed intermediate results of an investment intended to support climate change adaptation and resilience-building among farmers’ cooperatives in Rwanda. The assessment was based on a purposive sampling survey of farmers’ perspectives conducted in sites in 10 programme intervention districts of the country’s 30 districts. Assessed interventions included the enhancing of farmer-access, quality and utilization of climate information services; on-farm participatory trials of climate-smart crop and forage varieties; and climate-smart harvest and post-harvest support for infrastructural development at “HUBs” for shared post-harvest storage and marketing. Interventions included the capacity development among farmers’ organizations to access funding from commercial lending for integrating climate-smart features in warehouse construction and in other post-harvest infrastructure. Demonstration infrastructures were also constructed by a funding arrangement between the programme, local government structures and farmers’ organizations.

Farmers’ perspectives indicated appreciation of the value of and need for the (yet to be available) weather information. Farmers understood weather information that includes seasonal advisories to be of higher quality than daily weather forecasts. Farmer-scientist participatory on-farm trials were successful in identifying potato and maize varieties that met both climate-resilience and other farmer-defined criteria. However, the applied method for forage trails did not indicate satisfactory yield levels, nor did it generate farmer confidence. The assessment revealed resounding farmers’ approval for climate-smart infrastructure demonstrations. Misgivings were, however, indicated by farmers and their organizational leaders on the efficiency and effectiveness of the capacity development mechanism for commercial lending access to finance climate-smart requirements.