People and bananas on steep slopes: Agricultural intensification and food security under demographic pressure and environmental degradation in Rwanda

This research uses national farm survey data and other information to investigate agricultural intensification in Rwanda. The main focus is on how farmers we changing their land use in response to population growth.;The study shows that under demographic pressure, Rwandan households are expanding cultivation at the expense of pasture and fallow and relying increasingly on four crops: bananas, beans, sweet potatoes, and maize. While beam, sweet potatoes and are staples grown mostly for subsistence consumption, the expansion of bananas is largely a market-driven process. In 1990, bananas brought more cash to Rwandan farm households than coffee. The exchange of banana beer for food helped many poor households achieve food security. In part, this strategy is based on high taxes on industrially produced beer and low barriers for the informal imports of beans and cereals.;The results also show that land scarcity pushes Rwanda's smallholders to grow bananas in dense multi-layered. associations with other crops rather than on separate fields. In much of Rwanda, banana intercropping already accounts for more than half of the erosion-prone hillsides. Soil losses on fields intercropped with bananas vary greatly depending on crop management practices, but are generally well below those recorded on fields without bananas.;Population growth itself need not push Rwandan farmers to replace their boa bananas with food crops, but restrictions on food imports or declining banana yields due to pests or diseases could do so. However, if Rwanda's economy recovers and if policies target food security rather than food self-sufficiency, market-oriented intensification with banana perennial export crops, agroforestry, and mixed farming is likely to continue.;The large and expanding role of banana intercropping suggests that research and extension to make banana associations more productive ad sustainable deserve high priority. Especially increases in the productivity of food bananas would contribute greatly to food security. Both environmental and food security concerns argue for policies that invest in rural infrastructure and tax consumption rather than trade, thereby allowing barriers to specialize increasingly in high-value cash crops that in Rwanda happen to be also less degrading than the staple food crops.