Context and Intervention
SECONDARY, SAID, ASH
Our study takes place in the former Equateur province, as defined before the 2015 administrative reform. Specifically, the study area covers Nord Ubangi, Sud-Ubangi, and Mongala, which were part of the Equateur province in 2015 and are now defined as three separate provinces. We refer to the Equateur province in the rest of the article, corresponding to the denomination at the time of data collection.The Equateur province is a remote forested region, part of the broader Congo Basin forest, with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. Households in the province derive most of their income from small-scale subsistence agriculture through shifting cultivation of staples, complemented by the gathering of forest products, fishing, and hunting. The agricultural potential of the region is believed to be large, but productivity is very low, partly due to remoteness and lack of access to modern technologies. Smallholders generally use a limited range of inputs, including handheld tools and low-yielding local seed varieties. The availability of chemical fertilizers is very limited in the region, as are other soil fertility management practices other than the fallowing. And as the agro-climatological conditions are not conducive for large livestock (disease-prone humid forest environment), manure use is limited. Households rely mostly on family labor, and labor availability is constrained in periods of peak labor demand (preparation, planting, and harvesting). Commercialization is hampered by very low road density, poor road quality, and long distances to markets.The context is further characterized by relative land abundance and the informality of the tenure system. When there is still primary forest within the village boundaries, access to it is allocated by village leaders, clan leaders, or family chiefs, depending on the prevailing allocation system. Once a household has cleared a primary forest plot, a long-term right to cultivate that plot is generally established. That said, there is considerable heterogeneity in the institutional structure of land allocation across villages as a result of inconsistent local agricultural policies, often dating back to the colonial regime.Farmers practice slash-and-burn cultivation and, therefore, regularly open new fields in the forest. This process requires labor-intensive land preparation. First, trees and woody plants are cut down, and the vegetation is left to dry. Then, before the beginning of the rainy season, the biomass is burnt to create a layer of nutrient-rich ash and eliminate pests and weeds. Farmers typically cultivate several plots during the main agricultural season (average plot size: 0.6 hectares, average number of plots: 4.4). Some of those plots are on land that was already under cultivation the year before, while others require clearing of primary or secondary forest or overgrown fallow land. Household decisions regarding which fields to cultivate take place during the dry season preceding the main rainy season. Qualitative interviews conducted as part of the study’s fieldwork revealed that farmers are keenly aware of the soil fertility implications of those decisions. There is also a short agricultural season from August to November, during which only part of the farmers cultivate, but as it is uncommon to open new fields in the forest for the short agricultural season, we concentrate on the main season.The main staples grown in the region are maize, rice, groundnuts, cassava, soya, cowpea, yam, and plantain. The common cropping pattern (with local variations) is rotation starting with cereals in land cleared in the forest or overgrown fallow. This is generally followed by groundnuts or other legumes and then cassava for about 2 years, after which land is reverted to fallow for several years (typically for a minimum of two and up to ten years). This pattern aligns with historical agronomic recommendations in the region, according to which freshly deforested land should first be used for cereals, given their high nitrogen requirements. When soils are nitrogen-depleted, legumes can be planted as they fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. While land preparation is generally entrusted to men, most of the agricultural activities until harvest (such as weeding) are entrusted to women or done jointly. Women are also in charge of the cassava plots, where they collect the quantities necessary for the preparation of the main meal on a daily basis.In this context, the Agricultural Rehabilitation and Recovery Support Project (PARRSA) was implemented starting in 2011, as the main policy tool used by the DRC’s Ministry of Agriculture, with support from the World Bank, to help intensify Equateur’s agricultural sector at the time. An important part of the project focused on developing a market for modern seed varieties, including high-yielding varieties of maize and groundnuts, short-cycle rice, and a disease-tolerant variety of cassava. Promotion of modern seed varieties included: assistance to the national agronomic research institute to resume production of modern seed varieties; subsidies for seed multiplication by local seed multipliers; support to local agricultural extension agents to set up village-level demonstration plots; and a one-time farmer-level seed subsidy intervention that took place in February 2013 and which is the focus of this study. To address low productivity, the varieties that were promoted were selected by the project staff from the ministry of agriculture in partnership with the leading agricultural research agency (INERA) and the national seed service (SENASEM) for their productivity gain potential. Importantly, the government’s intervention only targeted production and access to seeds, and the issue of soil fertility was not addressed. It is not uncommon for agricultural development programs in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa to provide subsidies to facilitate crop varietal change, even if other countries in the region have invested heavily in mineral fertilizer subsidies. The PARRSA project was later restructured and received additional financing, partly to better incorporate land use management and deforestation concerns.