Investigating the effectiveness of land use consolidation– a component of the crop intensification programme in Rwanda

Highlights

• This paper is about land use consolidation in Rwanda.

• Land use consolidation is designed to reduce poverty and ensure national food and nutrition security

• The paper has used a systematic review of existing studies to investigate the effectiveness of land use consolidation

• None of the existing case studies has established the effectiveness and impact of land use consolidation

• .A more comprehensive impact study of LUC is needed considering overall policy and development ecosystem in Rwanda

Abstract

Fragmented agriculture land use remains a policy concern in Rwanda. In response to this, since 2008, land use consolidation (LUC) has been at the central of the agricultural intensification as a component of the Crop Intensification Programme (CIP). It is designed to reduce poverty and ensure national food and nutrition security. Despite emerging positive LUC's effects, fragmented land use persists especially more on the hillside than the marshlands. Existing studies assessing the effectiveness and impacts of LUC have so far generated a mixed and opposing evidence. To enlighten on the current status and dynamics of LUC, this paper has used a systematic review of research conducted to take stock of available empirical evidence on LUC's impacts across economic, food and nutrition security, and environmental and climate change resilience outcomes. Our results substantiate that none of the identified case studies has provided a strong basis to establish the overall effectiveness and impact of land use consolidation. Existing studies have only addressed some constituents of LUC and impacts on certain outcomes while leaving others unpacked. This leaves the studies vulnerable to potential biases, leading consequently to under or overestimate of LUC's effects. Going forward, we stress a need for a comprehensive impact study, specifically designed for a comprehensive empirical evaluation of LUC, taking into account its overall policy and development ecosystem. This will help to establish the achieved impact and inform a clear direction of its future interventions contributing to sustainable agriculture transformation agenda of Rwanda.

Introduction

Land use consolidation has been viewed as profitable land management option in terms of profitable farming, land use, agriculture productivity, and increased food security as compared to fragmented land use (Munnangi et al., 2020; Asiama et al., 2017). It has been used in many parts of Europe, Latin America, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa as part of options to addressing the diseconomies derived from fragmented land use and improve rural infrastructure (Muhinda and Dusengemungu, 2013; Asiama et al., 2017; Crecente et al., 2002; Munnangi et al., 2020). In Rwanda, land use consolidation (LUC) was introduced in 2008 along with the national land planning policy to free land for agricultural and non-agricultural investment and prohibition of any subdivision that would result in parcels below 1 ha (Bizoza and Havugimana, 2013; Ali and Deininger, 2014; Del Prete et al., 2019). Since then it remains central to the on-going agricultural intensification to support the country's agriculture sector transformation strategy (PSTA-4). LUC is implemented as one of the four programme components of the large -scale Crop Intensification Programme (CIP) introduced in September 2007 (Kathiresan, 2011; Del Prete et al., 2019): distribution of improved inputs, coordinated provision of extension services, support to post-harvest handling and storage facilities. CIP initially focused on six crops, namely maize, beans, cassava, rice, wheat, and Irish potato. Later, banana, soya bean and vegetables were included (Muhinda and Dusengemungu, 2013).

Over time, land fragmentation has been regarded in the national land and agriculture policies as negative but with little account of its positive effects (Konguka, 2013; Munt and Ikirezi, 2015; Ntihinyuzwa et al., 2019). As part of response, land use consolidation was launched with the Organic Law no August 2005 of July 14, 2005; later repealed by the Organic Law No 03/2013/OL of June 16, 2013 governing lands in Rwanda, in its article 30. This new Organic Law has defined land use consolidation as “a procedure of putting together small plots of land in order to manage the land and use it in an efficient and uniform manner so that its productivity is increased”. Since its introduction, LUC has stimulated a growing research on its adoption and expected benefits by farmers (Bizoza and Havugimana, 2013), effectiveness and impact (e.g. Kathiresan, 2011; Musahara et al., 2014; Habyarimana and Nkunzimana, 2017; Ndushabandi et al., 2018; Del Prete et al., 2019), comparison of its benefits against those drawn from fragmented land use management (e.g. Huggins, 2013; Ansoms et al., 2010; Ntinyuza et al., 2019; Chigbu et al., 2019; Del Prete et al., 2019). Furthermore, the tenure security of the ownership of plots under fragmented land use or under land use consolidation is scarcely discussed.

The available evidence from identified research case-studies has posited so far, a mixed perspective about the effectiveness and impacts of land use consolidation programme. For example, despite evidence of positive impacts of the land use consolidation from earlier studies by Musahara et al. (2014) and Ndushabandi et al. (2018), a recent study by Ntihinyuzwa et al. (2019) indicates that fragmented land use persists in Rwanda. Land users still perceive land fragmentation to be an effective land use to ensure risk management, food and nutrition security strategy positive effects on food quality, crop diversification, and more climate change resilience (Konguka, 2013; Del Prete et al., 2019). Besides, other studies suggest that more efficient farming and agriculture productivity is likely to be observed among smallholder farmers than the larger ones (Byiringiro and Reardon, 1996; Ali and Deininger, 2014; Clay et al., 2018). However, while these studies postulate some positive features of fragmented land use, but they at the same time recognize its negative effects in terms of agricultural production efficiency, loss of land through boundaries, boundaries induced conflicts; and hence considering these being part of feature of less developed agricultural systems (Blarel et al., 1992). Land use consolidation is for some selected crops and in some areas only while land fragmentation is a national feature, hence land use consolidation has not been as the norm of growing all crops everywhere.

Therefore, irrespective of the different perspectives from the existing literature on the effectiveness and impact of land use consolidation in Rwanda, to the author's knowledge, there are only two case-studies (Musahara et al., 2014; Ndushabandi et al., 2018) that have specifically endeavoured to assess the impact of land use consolidation at national level but also with some gaps in the methodological approaches and data needed. Other studies have limitations in their methodology design such as smaller study population, geographical location (administrative sector (s) or district (s), and consideration of one or fewer outcome variables; making difficult to establish a substantial evidence of the effectiveness and impact of land use consolidation in Rwanda (Lawry et al., 2017). These limitations raise important policy and research concerns about the economic, food and nutrition security and environmental and climate change resilience impacts of land use consolidation. Therefore, the aim of this present article is to merge all the different findings investigating the effectiveness of LUC and use the available evidence through a systematic review and furnish common findings, deficiencies, and major issues affecting the effectiveness and impact of land use consolidation, with focus to economic, food and nutrition security, and environmental and climate change resilience outcomes. The paper will further identify the research gaps based on the analysis of evidence base gathered in selected case-n studies as well as the approach and methodologies used to inform on future research consideration. Hence, findings of this paper generate a comprehensive knowledge of the drivers and new avenues to inform an effective implementation of the on-going land use consolidation and other connected programmes in the overall context of agricultural transformation in Rwanda. They will also contribute to the on-going debate about the effectiveness and impacts of land and agriculture related policies in Rwanda and elsewhere in the World (Lawry et al., 2014; Higgins et al., 2018; Munnangi et al., 2020).

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the materials and methodology used for this review, Section 3 presents theory that situates land use consolidation in the global SDGs and the national strategy for transformation. Maps the existing evidence on the effectiveness and impacts through a systematic review, Section 4 gives a synthesis of major findings on the existing evidence on the effectiveness and impact of the land use consolidation and identifies research gaps for future research and policy actions which later are discussed in Section 5 before the conclusions in Section 6.