No abstract

and Education of Kibungo (INATEK), Kibungo, RwandaGirinka-or the "one-cow per poor family" program-is currently promoted as a poverty reduction strategy in Rwanda. In this program, resource-poor farmers receive a dairy cow and develop various skills and assets to improve their livelihood. One potential benefit of the program is to improve soil fertility through the application of manure. A study was conducted in the Ngoma district of Rwanda to assess the effectiveness of manure usage and current levels of manure knowledge, attitudes, and practices among the program beneficiaries. Our results suggest that moreThe authors wish to thank all the Girinka farmers who generously accorded their time in this study; the mayor and vice mayor of Ngoma district for their sincere interest and administrative support in this research; all the veterinarians and agronomists at the district of Ngoma who provided timely assistance in fieldwork operations and logistics; and the survey team of students from INATEK who were instrumental in data collection. We gratefully acknowledge all the key informants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources, the Rwanda Animal Resources Development Authority and the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research in Rwanda. Sincere appreciation goes to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. than 90% of Girinka farmers are using manure, and farmers positively attributed increased crop yields and improved soil fertility to manure use. However, farmers were not consistently using recommended manure management practices, citing lack of manure handling and transporting tools, distance to fields, and poor construction of cow sheds as key limiting factors. Significant differences in manure management, access to information and extension services, and constraints hindering manure usage among male and female farmers were also identified in this study. We recommend stronger emphasis on beneficial manure management practices during the Girinka trainings and suggest several ways to improve the potential benefits of manure usage for Girinka farmers in this region of Rwanda.

The government of Rwanda is promoting agricultural intensification focused on the production of a small number of targeted commodities as a central strategy to pursue the joint policy goals of economic growth, food security and livelihood development. The dominant approach to increase the productive capacity of the land, crops and animal resources has been through large-scale land consolidation, soil fertility management, and the intensive use of biotechnology and external inputs. However, evidence has shown that many Rwandan farmers, who employ various strategies and mixed farming practices based on their specific economic, social, and environmental circumstances, face difficulties adopting the singular prescribed approach to become more productive, modern commodity producers. To empirically explore diversity in smallholders’ strategies and their contributions to livelihoods and compatibility with the recent intensification policies, we conducted household surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews in rural and peri-urban zones in Rwamagana district in Eastern Rwanda. Our analysis demonstrates how the dominant approach to intensification and specialisation overlooks the heterogeneity and dynamic nature of smallholder strategies. Moreover, our findings illustrate that a comprehensive understanding of farmer heterogeneity is necessary to explain the critical disjuncture between the government’s vision of modern agriculture and the ability of many smallholders to engage with this agenda and may inform opportunities to adapt policies to better align productivity goals and livelihoods. In doing so, we contribute to debates about the current framing of intensification policy that promotes Green Revolution technologies and emphasise alternative pathways for more inclusive and resilient agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Asset-based approaches -usually involving asset transfers and/or asset building -are increasingly central to thinking about poverty alleviation, social protection, graduation and livelihood resilience. Although the notion of assets is well established in the literature, the meanings of and relationships between asset(s), livelihood capital(s), risks(s), welfare and wellbeing, and graduation need further analysis. We examine issues arising from asset-based approaches to poverty reduction and introduce the idea of 'asset-ness' -the qualities and characteristics of different assets -which have received little attention from those promoting or designing asset-based social protection programmes. We argue that asset-ness provides a key to understanding differences in the impacts of asset-based social protection and associated processes and dynamics of graduation. As such the article aims to advance understanding of graduation theory. We develop this argument with reference to domestic livestock, which are commonly distributed to poor people as part of asset-based poverty alleviation and social protection programmes.

With an example from Rwanda, we ask how the State's policy strategy and attempts to construct "ideal agricultural subjects" resonate with the actual changes experienced by farmers themselves. We present three different empirical examples to show that a) when opportunities from agricultural transformation initially arise, only the wealthiest can capture them, and even then the government is seen as the main beneficiary; b) some priority crop growers experience an increase in income and savings due to higher productivity and better prices, while those who do not grow priority crops face land scarcity and lack of employment opportunities; c) requirements to upscale livestock production do not align with the strategies or capacities of many smallholders. We show that only endowed farmers with sufficient land and ability to engage in priority crops or livestock production can take advantage of the opportunities presented by agricultural transformation, while smallholders with constraints to their adoption of promoted changes face vulnerability to dispossession and poverty. We relate these findings to our broader conceptual frame, and encourage further research to explore the integration, modification, resistance to and impacts of idealized policies in Rwanda and across sub-Saharan Africa.