Farmers transporting bananas to market in rural Rwanda (Photo – IFPRI/Gwendolyn Stansbury)
Kigali – Despite growing efforts to boost food production and resilience, Rwandan farmers are storing less than 1 percent of what they produce, raising concerns about household-level preparedness for future shocks and food supply stability.
Data from the Seasonal Agricultural Survey (SAS) 2025A released last week reveals that for most key crops, on-farm food storage is nearly non-existent.
The vast majority of harvests are either consumed, sold immediately, or used for barter, wages, or seed — leaving families with almost no food held back for later use.
These numbers are alarmingly low given the importance of food reserves in managing seasonal hunger, market volatility, and household emergencies.
Even though Rwanda produced more food in 2025 than in 2024—6.16 million metric tons compared to 5.95 million metric tons, an increase of about 3.6%—and expanded cultivated farmland by over 55,000 hectares, most smallholder farmers are still keeping almost none of their harvest.
According to the agricultural survey, farmers stored less than 1% of what they produced. For example, only 1.9% of maize, 0.5% of beans, and 0.2% of Irish potatoes were kept by farmers after harvest.
For Paddy Rice, Wheat, Sweet Potato, Bananas – the farms aren’t keeping anything (0.0%).
Meanwhile, the government’s strategic maize reserves increased by over 400%, from 5,837 tonnes in 2023 to 29,510 tonnes in 2024—enough to feed the country for about 83 days.
These levels represent a 400% increase in maize reserves and a 36.6% increase in beans, but still fall far below national targets of 140,980 tonnes for maize and 69,917 tonnes for beans.
These reserves are meant primarily for emergency relief and market stabilization—not for regular household consumption. Therefore, they do not offset the systemic risk posed by households having no food stored at home.
This gap exists because many farmers are forced to sell their produce immediately to meet urgent needs like food, school fees, or medical bills.
Most don’t have proper storage facilities, and some of the main crops—like bananas, sweet potatoes, and Irish potatoes—spoil quickly without refrigeration. Others fear losing their harvest to pests if kept too long.
A farmer takes his harvested onions to market, likely all they have produced.
So, even with higher national food output and stronger government reserves, rural families often end up buying food later in the year, sometimes at higher prices.
This shows why helping farmers store food and build up their own household reserves is essential to making food security real for everyone.
A Good System Relying on Immediate Consumption
The findings paint a clear picture of a food system that relies almost entirely on fresh harvest cycles and informal markets, with little cushion in the event of droughts, floods, pest outbreaks, or price shocks.
Post-harvest losses in Rwanda are already considered low compared to regional averages, but minimal food storage at the household level means any production disruption can rapidly lead to food insecurity, especially in rural and low-income households.
The low storage levels are attributed to a mix of challenges: Lack of proper storage facilities like silos and climate-controlled granaries; Limited post-harvest handling knowledge among smallholder farmers; Financial pressures pushing farmers to sell crops immediately for income; and Perishability of key staples like sweet potatoes, bananas, and Irish potatoes.
Implications for Food Security
With households keeping less than 1% of their food, Rwanda remains highly vulnerable to shocks — especially in the face of growing climate variability and regional instability.
These are Rwanda’s Seed and Silo Plants in the the Special Economic Zone, Kigali, launched in August 2013
The risk is not hypothetical. In 2023, poor harvests due to erratic rainfall in the Eastern and Southern provinces led to price surges and forced the government to release strategic stockpiles to stabilize the market.
Such incidents could become more frequent as climate change intensifies. Without better storage capacity at the household level, families may find themselves with no fallback options during critical times.
In parallel, expanding and strengthening national reserves remains crucial, especially as Rwanda aims to become more self-sufficient in food production and less dependent on imports or emergency assistance.
