It all started with a push for one cow per family in 2006.

The plan sounded comical but it was its three-pronged intention that has since changed Rwanda’s food security status.

Proponents of the policy said could provide milk to the household, put some money in their pockets and provide organic manure.

Then East Africa’s second smallest economy formulated a policy to stop land fragmentation.

Farmers merged their small parcels and worked together in larger single units making the best use of fertiliser, improved seeds and labour.

To make agriculture a better managed sector the Rwanda Agricultural Board was formed bringing the Rwanda Agricultural Research Institute, Rwanda Agricultural Development Authority and Rwanda Animal Resources Development Authority under one roof.

The result is that three years later, Rwanda has bid food deficits goodbye.

Minister for Agriculture Agnes Kalibata, points out that President Paul Kagame has repeatedly said hunger is shameful and must be eradicated.

“That is why he has placed right thinking people in charge of agriculture,” she said in July last year, at the first African Green Revolution Forum in Accra, Ghana.

At the November EAC Heads of State Food Security and Climate Change Retreat in Arusha, Kigali was cited as probably the best example of how a tiny, hilly and recovering nation has turned around its agriculture to play in the league of the few countries in the world that can pass the test of being food secure.

For the past three years, Rwanda has steadily raised its production, which has been growing at 16 per cent per annum since 2007.

Favourable weather conditions, improved seeds and better crop husbandry have combined to raise food harvests, significantly boosting food security.

For a country that in 2006 recorded a miserable 0.7 per cent growth in agricultural production, Rwanda has every reason to blow its own trumpet.

It produces mainly maize, cassava, beans and bananas.

Green revolution

“The good performance of the agricultural sector is mainly attributed to the government’s bold move of implementing the Green Revolution programme,” Ms Kalibata said of one of the only five countries on the continent that have committed the recommended minimum of 10 per cent of their national budgets to agriculture.

The others are Malawi, Mali, Ghana and Tunisia.

Rwanda has implemented an aggressive programme aimed at halting the effects of climate change, including preserving wetlands and forests as well as a countrywide tree-planting programme.

In 2008, the government, under its Crop Intensification Project, started distributing high-yielding seed varieties and fertiliser across the country.

This, coupled with training on crop husbandry has seen production more than double in four years.

In 2008, average yields of maize per acre reached a record seven tonnes, which has been maintained since.

Encouraged by the country’s agricultural development, support from development partners led by the International Finance Corporation has been flowing into the sector.

By mid last year increases in yields stood at 99 per cent for maize, 43 per cent for wheat 28 per cent for rice and sweet potatoes.

An 11 per cent increase in bean production marked a significant increase in protein supply to the population.