AGRICULTURE IS BY ITS NATURE THE RESULT OF THE INTERACTION BETWEEN SOCIAL AND
environmental processes, and in Rwanda the impacts of one upon the other are particularly
striking. The Highland prefecture of Gikongoro is experiencing gradual but serious declines in
food production which have led to severe food shortages in recent years. The immediate cause of
this diminished productivity is seen by farmers, policy makers and researchers to be soil
degradation. Farmers are in the process of readapting their agricultural system to this degradation
of the physical environment, forming a loop of people/environment interaction.
Land degradation in Gikongoro is thus an interesting example to explore the possibilities and
difficulties of integration of household survey data with environmental data. This discussion of
the integration of data types is based on analyses conducted for the Rwanda Society-Environment
Project (Campbell et al 1993) and field research in Gikongoro for the author's dissertation. A
brief historical synopsis of land use changes and land degradation in Rwanda will first be
presented to set the context for the subsequent discussion of the limitations and possibilities of
integrating household-level survey and environmental data for understanding land use and
environmental changes.