A Rwandese ,Benimana Uwera Gilberthe On Impact of Hermetic Storage Technology Adoption on Smallholder Maize Farmers’ Income in Gatsibo District, Rwanda

The growing food demand occasioned by the rising global population is emerging a major issue of global concern. This implies that food production needs to increase in order to meet global food demand. Studies show that more than one-third of the global food production is lost through post harvest operations along food supply chain. Therefore, reducing food losses using appropriate storage technologies is important due to curb food losses to ensure food and nutrition security.In Rwanda, most of the maize losses occur at storage level.  Hermetic Storage Technologies (HST)have been proved to be effective in the control of post-harvest storage losses in maize. However, the adoption of HST has been low and farmers keep using non-advanced storage technologies.Empirical evidence on the effect of adopting HST on storage loss reduction vis-à-vis other storage technologies is virtually non-existent. Yet such information is needed by Rwandan policy makers in designing policies and programs aimed at maize loss reduction to enhance food security.This study characterized different storage technologies used by farmers in terms of level of adoption, benefits and constraints using descriptive statistics.  It also investigated the factors affecting smallholder maize farmers’ decision about using alternative storage technologies using multivariate probit. Finally, the study assessed the impact of HST on maize storage income among smallholder maize farmers using an endogenous switching regression(ESR) on a sample of 301 smallholder maize farmers from Gatsibo District of Rwandawho had been selected using a multi-stage sampling technique.