Agricultural Intensification and Value-enhancing Support Project

In Burundi population growth and the return of refugees have resulted in heavy pressure on the land. The average farm size is shrinking, the soil is rapidly becoming degraded, and virtually all public land has been distributed or occupied. Food insecurity and malnutrition are becoming chronic for a large percentage of households.

IFAD channels financing for the project through a grant, which will have no impact on the country’s debt. The project’s objectives are to develop organized and sustainable family farming to allow small-scale rural producers to increase their incomes. The target group consists mainly of small-scale hillside farmers, and a secondary group includes farmers in the marshlands that the project will rehabilitate or develop.

The project’s specific objectives are to:

• support public and private institutions, civil society and organizations of poor rural people, and make them stakeholders in partnerships for agricultural development, piloting interventions that can be replicated at national level
• work with poor small-scale farmers to help them build their human, physical and technical capacity to protect productive assets, increase productivity, improve nutrition and raise incomes
• improve market access to permit producers’ organizations to make the most of value added to their produce.

Activities will focus on reinforcing and protecting productive capital, supporting the enhancement of the value of agricultural production and the development of infrastructure, and facilitating project implementation and coordination.

The aims of activities under the project are to:

• develop new marshlands, rehabilitate existing marshlands and protect watersheds to combat erosion and integrate crop and livestock farming, fertilizer use and agricultural intensification
• increase the productivity and yields of rice and other food crops to increase farmers’ incomes
• foster sustainable access to quality inputs and seeds
• increase the value of farm production to benefit small-scale producers
• encourage greater participation by vulnerable groups in project management

Communities, associations and cooperatives will be fully involved in the decision-making process and there will be a focus on mobilizing local technical assistance capacity.

As IFAD’s partners and cofinanciers in the project, Belgian Technical Cooperation (CTB) will be responsible for activities related to seed production, and Gutwera Neza, financed by the European Union, will support community development centres. The project will maintain close contact with marshlands development projects, particularly those financed by the World Bank and the United Nations system. It will work to link them to the initiative for dissemination of the system of rice intensification. The World Food Programme (WFP) will help identify participants and support infrastructure projects. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will support the establishment of teaching farms.