Farmers in the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Food Security Project (SAIP) intervention site in Rwamagana have embraced agriculture mechanization to improve land productivity as well as promote labor saving technology.

SAIP supported farmers with agriculture machinery to enable them cultivate a large a piece of land within a short period of time as part of the Project’s plan to address shortage of man power and as well promote light farming technology for women.

Mechanization aims to minimize the cost of production especially for land preparation, ploughing and planting while saving time compared to the ordinary methods such as using hand hoes.

SAIP launched the use of mechanization farming on 10 hectares of land belonging of HIRWA Cooperative as a model farm in Bihembe cell, Nyakariro sector in Rwamagana district to enable other farmers in the area to embrace mechanization.

“We started the pilot phase with HIRWA cooperative in order to show farmers the importance of mechanization farming as compared to traditional methods of using hand hoes. We believe the farmers will recognize the difference and soon most of them will adopt mechanization,” said Theoneste Rugerinyange, SAIP District Project Coordinator at Rwamagana District.  

According to him, after the launch of the agriculture mechanization, several farmers  within and out the site were interested in using the technology and asked how they could access the power tillers or tractors either for hiring or buying.

“SAIP supported us to acquire power tillers which have enabled us to increase the land under cultivation within a short period of time compared to using hoes. We thank SAIP for launching agriculture mechanization technology in our farm,” said Olive Uwamahoro, president of HIRWA Cooperative.

She added that preparing land for cultivation using hoes consumes a lot of time and energy which often limits agricultural production.

SAIP targets to increase agricultural productivity, market access, and food security of the targeted beneficiaries in the project intervention areas.