“I started with just 100 chickens”, begins Mr Jean Claude Ruzibiza
He goes on to explain how from small beginnings he has now become Managing Director of Rwanda Best, a farm producing 4,500 eggs a day and growing fruit and veg to satisfy a significant part of nearby Kigali’s hungry population.
With malnutrition in the world causing the stunting of an estimated 155 million children in 2016 the quality of food consumed is as imperative as its quantity.
This got me thinking about the chicken and egg debate. What comes first in changing dietary behaviour, demand or supply? Consumers or growers?
“The issue is not market forces that are overriding nutritional behaviour”, stresses Mr. Olivier Habimana from Rwanda Development Organisation, my second post side event interview, “it is just one piece of the puzzle that is not yet crafted”, he continues
From the point of view of an individual smallholder farmer in Rwanda, Mr Habimana helps me to understand the dilemma many farmers face in the region. Whether to save some crop for a more balanced diet in the coming months or to sell it all to pay for immediate family essentials. Mr Habimana’s programme in Rwanda is working at this level to provide farmers with the basic educational tools to understand how markets and global food value chains affect them.
Read the full post on the CFS blog here.
Blogpost by Teddy Searight, #CFS44 Social Reporter – T.Searight(at)cabi.org
Photo credit: Ruben Alexander on Flickr
This post is part of the live coverage during the 44rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security, a joint project between GFAR and CFS. This post is written by one of our social reporters, and represents the author’s views only.
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