Negative evaluation of conservation agriculture: perspectives from African smallholder farmers

ABSTRACT

Despite more than three decades of promotion, conservation agriculture (CA) has not been widely adopted by smallholder farmer in sub-Saharan Africa. This low rate of adoption reflects substantial negative evaluation of CA by many smallholder farmers, the causes of which have not been adequately explored in an in-depth, qualitative manner. Hence, we implement the Livelihoods Platforms Approach to explore directly with negatively evaluating farmers the reasons why they chose not to implement CA using semi-structured interviews with 35 farmers from 23 communities in 6 African countries. While there are issues with perceived benefit and relevance, the primary driver of negative evaluation of CA was found to be the feasibility of implementation. The required resources to implement CA (financial, physical, human and informational) are limited by community and institutional constraints which appear unlikely to be overcome through interventions targeted at addressing household resources. More positive evaluation of CA by smallholder farmers requires: (1) development of financially viable CA adoption pathways; (2) incorporation of wider livelihood objectives into a CA ‘package’; (3) re-evaluation of current extension policy; and (4) development of CA-complementary agricultural policies. Without addressing these issues, the potential benefits of CA adoption are unlikely to be achieved in African smallholder systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Qualitative assessment
• conservation agriculture
• technology adoption
• Africa
• adoption gap
• farming systems research

Acknowledgements

The author thanks all the farmers who participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Brendan Brown http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4498-6399

Ian Nuberg http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1942-1190

Rick Llewellyn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-7699

Additional information

Funding

The fieldwork for this study was funded by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) – led Maize CRP and CIMMYT socioeconomics program, with additional support from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Agriculture and the University of Adelaide.