The Department is composed of Crop, Livestock, Fisheries, and Entomology and Vermin Control Services. The Department ensures that the population is food secure, people get employed, and that there are increased household incomes. The District is endowed with fertile volcanic soils, two rain seasons, 4 lakes and numerous rivers, two National Parks and 2 international borders (Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo).
The District produces Irish potatoes, beans, maize, sorghum, bananas cabbages, onions, tomatoes and passion fruits. Also available are domestic animals kept for manure, food and income to the households including goats, cattle, chicken, sheep and pigs.
Recent developments in the Department include the implementation of Single Spine Agricultural Extension Structure, Operation Wealth Creation supplying improved agricultural inputs, promotion of tea as a major cash crop and up coming agro processing industries like Tea, Irish potatoes and milk processing. The rooted Apical cutting Technology for clean seed potato production is being promoted.
In the last 4 years the sector has received increased budgetary and non budgetary support from the Central Government including the Agricultural Extension Grant (AEG) and the Production and Marketing Grant (PMG), both operational and development. As a Department, we have learnt that networking, coordination and cooperation with all stakeholders is critical and leads to efficiency service delivery. Enterprise selection according to different zones is critical for increased production and productivity.
As an environmental degradation mitigation measure, the department has promoted the biogas technology, which consumes dangerous gases such as methane and ammonia to generate a cheap source of energy.
The concept of Results – Oriented Management (ROM) has revived the efficiency of the Department by motivating the available human resource and rationally allocating financial resource and ensuring accountability.
The Department has established an Integrated Research and Demonstration farm and a District Veterinary Laboratory to strengthen extension-farmer-research linkage and disease diagnostic capacity