Socio-economic and institutional factors affecting smallholders farmers to adopt agroforestry practices in southern province of Rwanda

This paper is mainly focused on identifying the socio economic and institutional factors infl uencing agroforestry adoption in Southern Province. Field survey was conducted during July to September, 2019 using structured questionnaire. This study was carried out in four districts in southern province of Rwanda. The number of respondents involved in the study was 650 farmers. A descriptive survey design was used in this study. For the selection of the sample, the study adopted a stratifi ed random sampling technique and simple random technique. Binary logit regression model has been used to determine the factors affecting farmers adopting agroforestry. Finally, Binary regression analysis showed no signifi cant association between the adoption of agroforestry practices and respondent’s age, gender, marital status, farming experience or income range of the respondents. On the other hand, there is a positive signifi cant association between the adoption of agroforestry practices and household size is 0.00 p-value as well as the farm size of the respondents. It is expected that farmers with larger household size are more likely to adopt agroforestry practices than farmers with smaller household size and also shows that most of the farmers who were more likely to adopt agroforestry had a bigger land acreage for planting more trees. Research Article Socio-economic and institutional factors affecting smallholders farmers to adopt agroforestry practices in southern province of Rwanda Mukundente Liliane1*, Ndunda Ezekiel2 and G Gathuru2 1Rwanda Southern Province, P.O. BOX 05 Nyanza, Rwanda 2Environmental science and Education Department, Kenyatta University, P.O. BOX 4384400100, Nairobi, Kenya Received: 15 April, 2020 Accepted: 06 June, 2020 Published: 08 June, 2020 *Corresponding author: Mukundente Liliane, Rwanda Southern Province, P.O. BOX 05 Nyanza, Rwanda, E-mail:


Introduction
Agroforestry is one of the most noticeable land-use systems across agro-ecological zones and landscapes in the world. With increased threats of climate change and food shortages and, concern in Agroforestry gathers its ability to meet different adaptation needs on-farm in other to achieve many roles in Agriculture Forestry and Land Use associated mitigation pathways [1]. Income from carbon, wood energy, assets, improved soil fertility; ecosystem services and enhancement of local climate conditions are all provided by agroforestry; in other to reduce human effects on natural forests [2]. Maximum of these effects have immediate local adaptation benefi ts when leading to global achievement to control concentrations of greenhouse gasses in atmosphere. [3]. Agroforestry has ability to recover soil fertility primarily by increasing soil organic matter and fi xing leguminous trees with biological nitrogen.
Farm trees also promote closer nutrient cycling than monocultivation systems and enrich the soil with nutrients and organic matter while enhancing proper soil structural relations [4]. Therefore, trees help to recover nutrients, maintain soil moisture and increase organic soil quality by tapping water and preventing nutrient leaching [5,6]. There are benefi ts of outstanding agroforestry technologies, such as fast growing fuel wood trees, native fruit trees that provide additional nutrition and revenue, trees that can supply medicinal plant products and trees that improve the soil [7]. The interest of researching agroforestry in a changing climate stems from the benefi ts of agroforestry to produce farmers ' assets, mixed with opportunities to mitigate change of climate and advantage to promote sustainable production that improves quality of the diversity and resilience of agro-ecosystems. [8].
Citation: Liliane  Agroforestry in India adds to the Indian Agricultural Research Council's target of growing forest cover from the current 23% of the land size to 33% [9]. The Greening India Task Force Report on Living Security and Sustainable Development suggests that 18 million hectares of rain-fed land and 10 million hectares of irrigated land should be managed under agroforestry systems [9]. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report on Climate Change [10] has recognized the Agroforestry's ability to tackle multiple issues and provide a variety of scientifi c, environmental and socio-economic benefi ts. Estimates of the carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems range from 0.7-1.6 Gt to 6.3 Gt [11]. Secondary environmental benefi ts comprise land tenure stability, increased farm income, food availability, biodiversity restoration and maintenance, conservation and maintenance of above and below-ground carbon storage capacity, and watershed hydrology and soil protection [12].
Plantings such as poplars (Populus) and eucalyptus (Eucalyptus) are well maintained and successful activity in India. On many farm properties in South Asia, quickly growing poplars are now many components of woodlots and shelter belts.
Food-producing trees cultivated in systems of agroforestry will increase the economic security and the nutritional of poor people living in tropical countries [13]. Many Sub-Saharan African smallholder farmers practice agroforestry. Such systems infl uenced despite lasting for long times attempts to introduce annual crop monoculture production, which in Africa was far less successful than elsewhere [14]. Agroforestry has been shown to give farmers a number of advantages. In many cases, for example, it can enhance soil fertility and boost farm household resilience by providing home consumption or additional products for sale [15]. The concept that farm trees provide livelihood advantage is not recent, and many farmers have adopted diversity-based approaches to adapting agriculture to change of climate [16].
In view of persistent food shortages, predicted change of climate and increasing prices of agricultural contributions dependent on fossil fuel, agroforestry has newly experienced a surge in interest from development communities and research as a cost-effective means of improving food safety at the same time contributing to mitigation and adaptation of climate change. Consequently, agroforestry is often absent from guidelines to ensure food safety in the context of climate variability [17], although many activities have been presented to provide advantages for rural development, buffer against climate fl uctuations, help farmers to adapt and mitigate climate change [18]. Several studies have shown that agroforestry practices can delay or reverse soil degradation, sequestrate carbon from secure livelihoods and atmosphere by providing environmental and economic benefi ts [9,19,20]. Besides that soil fertility, farmers run trees can also provide functions in addition to the products and ecosystem services that inspired farmers to conserve or plant trees [21,22].
Agroforestry systems and forest plantations in Rwanda are the main sources of fuelwood used by many people.
Nevertheless, agroforestry can be an effi cient strategy for helping smallholder farmers adapt to change of climate. Agroforestry provides many benefi ts over other farming systems in assisting farmers to cope with the changes expected. Agroforestry helps to diversify production into a wider range of forestry and agricultural products, thus avoiding the increased climate variability predicted to result from climate change [9,23].
Agroforestry can also increase agricultural output products in wet and dry seasons by increasing soil porosity and using deep-rooted trees during drought periods and increasing soil aeration and evapotranspiration levels during wet season and also reducing runoff [24]. Agroforestry also offers farmers with a means to diversify their farms by building materials, making fi rewood, fruits, and other tree products. Rwanda does not have enough forest resources to meet the increasing demand for woody bioenergy and timber products [25]. Agroforestry may play a positive role in improving this challenge by giving farmers access to multifunctional trees that can yield not only fi rewood or coal, but also timber and other wood products [25,26]. Eventually, by increasing water fi ltration and reducing soil erosion, agroforestry can increase water quantity and quality [9,23].
The main objective of this study was to determine the socio-economic and institutional factors infl uencing adoption of agroforestry practices in Southern Province of Rwanda.

Site description
The study was conducted in Southern Province of Rwanda is located at 2°19'60.0"S latitude and 29°40'00.0"E longitude.
The topography of southern province is generally hilly with deep water valley and this contributes to the regular fl ush fl ood that damage property and cause loss of life during rainy seasons and also provides soil erosion. The rainfall pattern is bimodal determines seasonality.
The long rain is between March and May, short rain in October up to December. The monthly means of daily temperature maxima range from 28.5 °C to 32°C [27].
Agriculture is the main economic activity in southern province. Consequently the province has given priority to the growing of tea, coffee, wheat, Passion, Irish potatoes, processing of honey and livestock keeping. Same farmers' practices agriculture together with trees and others don't practice such kind of agriculture Figure 1.

Sampling design
The descriptive survey design used in this research to gather information by interviewing or administering a questionnaire to a sample of individuals [28]. This research was carried out in four (4)

Target population
The location of this study was chosen because the southern region is one of the areas in Rwanda with fruitful agroforestry stories to boost food production and increase household income. The destination population for this study comprise farmers which comprise of 6925, 1247 agroforestry adopters household and 4043 household of non-adopters of agroforestry will be the respondents from those districts located in southern provinces of Rwanda as shown in distribution Table 1 Sample size To determine the sample from this study, simplifi ed  ( Table 2) Sampling and data collection procedure The study employed a stratifi ed random sampling technique. In this technique, the analysis was done on element with strata, during stratifi ed sampling, a random sample was used for each strata. Therefore, random sampling was taken to select 290 samples of adopters and 360 of non-adopters in four districts of southern province. Purposive sampling was employed to identify the key informants from the relevant agriculture offi ce for each district.
In data collection the researcher used interview and questionnaires. The study used questionnaires which were self-administered as principal research instrument. This study also utilized interview schedule as instrument to collect data from some respondents.
In collecting data, the researcher adopted primary and secondary data and the type of data expected to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Primary data was obtained    Secondary data was obtained from the relevant authorities that deal with agriculture in each district and also other data were gathered from books, journals and the previous farmers' livelihood record from agricultures offi ce of each district.

Data analysis
In this study binary logit regression model has been used to The fi nal model of the decision to adopt agroforestry can therefore be estimated by equation below: Yi-the dependent variable (decision to adopt agroforestry practices) X 1 -gender of respondents X 2 -total annually income X 3 -education X 4 -respondents 'age X 5 -household size X 6 -farm size X 7 -farming experience X 8 -Acsess to credit service X 9 -Access to market X 10 -Access to extension services

Demographic characteristics of the respondents
This section presents an overview of the socio-economic characteristics of the sample of farmers participating in the survey as well as the variables used in the analysis and how they are defi ned ( Table 3). The demographic features provide the information about respondents' age, household size, farm size, farming experience as continuous data and employment, agroforestry practices, marital status, gender, education level as categorical data.
The results in Table 3 indicated that the Mean age of respondents was 45.88 years, the maximum age of the farmers was 70 years and minimum age of the farmers was 23years old. This indicated that the respondents were adult and enthusiastic, and were able to participate actively in agricultural activities. In addition, the younger age groups in the Rwandan community were students attending secondary and tertiary institutions. Table 3  The results demonstrated that Mean of farm size of the respondents was 22.67 acres with the minimum of 5 acres and maximum of 44 acres farming activities. The annual farm income from farming activities had mean of 127003.1Rwfs the minimum income was 50000Rwfs and maximum income was 750000Rwfs per year. The consumption expenditure of the farmers was 50000Rwfs as minimum money and maximum

Marginal effect for the binary variables
Marginal effects inform us how a dependent variable (outcome) changes if a specifi c independent variable changes.
The marginal effects for binary variables measure discrete change (Table 6). Mathews, et al. [28,29], in their study of agroforestry adoption in Wellington County, Ontario reported no correlation of age and gender with the adoption of agroforestry. Place, et al. [29,30], also showed no infl uence of education on adoption of agroforestry practices in Kenya.   Years of farming experience indicated a somewhat positive infl uence on farmers' adoption decision but this was not statistically signifi cant. With an increase in years of farming experience, the odds of adoption increased by a factor of 1.006, controlling for all other variables.

Socio-economic characteristics and agroforestry adoption
Farm size and household size and of farmers positively infl uenced the adoption of agroforestry practices at 95% confi dence interval.
Household labor measured by total household size positively infl uenced adoption of agroforestry at a statistically signifi cant P-value of 0.000. For a unit increase in total household size, the coeffi cient of adopting agroforestry practices is increased by a factor of 1.400 controlling for all other variables. This is in agreement with Ayuya, et al. [31], who concurs with the fi ndings of this study by indicating that household size is signifi cantly related to adoption of agroforestry technology. Large household size positively infl uences adoption of labor-demanding agricultural technologies since they have the ability to relax the labor limitations necessary in the course of introduction of new technologies. It is expected that farmers with larger household size are further likely to adopt agroforestry practices than farmers with smaller household size.
An increase in farm size positively infl uenced adoption of agroforestry at a statistically signifi cant P-value of 0.000. This shows that most of the farmers who were more likely to adopt agroforestry had a bigger acreage of land for planting more trees. From the fi ndings, respondents' farm size is related to adoption rate of agroforestry; those with larger farm sizes are more likely to adopt agroforestry than those with small farm size. This is in agreement with several studies such as the study by Orisakwe and Agomuo [32], who examined the socioeconomic factors of respondents practicing agroforestry and revealed that, farm size of the respondents had a positive relationship to levels of agroforestry adoption. He reported that an increase in respondents' farm size leads to an increase in adoption of agroforestry. A similar study by Kabwe, et al. [33], reported a signifi cant association between adoption of agroforestry and farm size. According to Geremew [34], an increase of farm size by one hectare, increases the possibility of adopting agroforestry.

Institutional factors and agroforestry adoption
Access to credit, access to market and access to extension services of farmers negatively infl uenced the adoption of agroforestry practices at 5% level of signifi cance. For a unit increase in access to credit, the coeffi cient of adopting agroforestry practices decreased by a factor of 1.190 controlling for all other variables.
Access to market indicated a somewhat positive infl uence on farmers' adoption decision but this was not statistically signifi cant. By increasing access to market, the coeffi cient of adoption increased by a factor of 0.482, controlling for all other variables.
For farmers with access to extension service, the coeffi cient of adoption increased by a factor of 2.059 compared to those with no access to extension service. Results from this study showed access to extension service on tree planting positively associated with adoption of agroforestry but its effect in predicting the decision to adopt agroforestry is statistically not signifi cant.

Conclusion and recommandation
The study sought to determine the socio-economic factors infl uencing smallholder farmers' decision to adopt agroforestry practices in Southern province of Rwanda. Socioeconomic factors and farmers value for trees expressed by their enthusiasm to plant trees on farms infl uenced the decision to adopt agroforestry. The key factors which had statistically signifi cant infl uence on farmers' decision to adopt agroforestry practices were total household size and total farm size. The study also concluded that the size of farm had an infl uence on their decision to plant/not to plant trees. It further concluded that household size affect tree planting options among most smallholder farmers in many ways that include enough sources of labor and management.
The relevant government agencies should be encouraged the farmers in the areas to practice agroforestry so that they can benefi t from crop yield of the crops and additional income from the sales of the tree products.