Rwanda - Rwanda Seasonal Agriculture Survey 2015

The Seasonal Agriculture Survey (SAS) sample is composed of two categories of respondents: agricultural operators1 and large-scale farmers (LSF).

For the 2015 SAS, NISR used as the sampling method a dual frame sampling design
combining selected area frame sample3 segments and a list of large-scale farmers.

NISR used also imagery from RNRA with a very high resolution of 25 centimeters to divide the total land of the country into twelve strata. A total number of 540 segments were spread throughout the country as coverage of the survey with 25,346 and 23,286 agricultural operators in Season A and Season B respectively. From these numbers of agricultural operators, sub-samples were selected during the second phases of Seasons A and B.

It is important to note that in each of agricultural season A and B, data collection was undertaken in two phases. Phase I was mainly used to collect data on demographic and social characteristics of interviewees, area under crops, crops planted, rainfall, livestock, etc. Phase II was mainly devoted to the collection of data on yield and production of crops.

Phase I serves at collecting data on area under different types of crops in the screening process, whereas the Phase II is mainly devoted to the collection of data on demographic, social characteristics of interviewees, together with yields of the different crops produced. Enumerated large-scale farmers (LSF) were 558 in both 2015 Season A and B. The LSF were engaged in either crop farming activities only, livestock farming activities only, or both crop and livestock farming activities. Agricultural operators are the small scale farmers within the sample segments. Every selected segment was firstly screened using the appropriate materials such as the segment maps, GIS devices and the screening form. Using these devices, the enumerators accounted for every plot inside the sample segments. All Tracts were classified as either agricultural (cultivated land, pasture, and fallow land) or non-agricultural land (water, forests, roads, rocky and bare soils, and buildings).

During Phase I, a complete enumeration of all farmers having agricultural land and operating within the 540 selected segments was undertaken and a total of 25,495 and 24,911 agricultural operators were enumerated respectively in Seasons A and B. Season C considered only 152 segments, involving 3,445 agricultural operators.

In phase II, 50% of the large-scale farmers were undertaking crop farming activities only and 50% of the large-scale farmers were undertaking both crop and livestock farming and were selected for interview. A sample of 199 and 194 large-scale farmers were interviewed in Seasons A and B, respectively, using a farm questionnaire.

From the agricultural operators enumerated in the sample segments during Phase I, a sample of the agricultural operators was designed for Phase II as follows: 5,502 for Season A, 5,337 for Season B and 644 for Season C. The method of probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling at the national level was used.
Furthermore, the total number of enumerated large-scale farmers was 774 in 2015 Season A and 622 in Season B.

The Season C considered 152 segments counting 8,987 agricultural operators from which 963 agricultural operators were selected for survey interviews.


The response rate for Seasonal Agriculture Survey is 98%.


The sample weights were calculated for each district considering the total number of segments in each district and the sample size in the specific districts.